Choosing a career is a daunting task, especially for young people. To help guide our students in their personal development and enable them to explore career options, each year, YISS offers a Career Day organized by the high school administration and the YISS PTO. This year’s event on Thursday, May 27, chose the theme “Designing Your Life: Pivoting with the Pandemic” and involved a total of 26 experienced professionals across various industries. High school students not only learned about the backgrounds and career choices made by our workshop presenters but also heard about how various companies or industries were forced to flex and pivot due to circumstances caused by COVID. 

The morning began with a keynote presentation by Daniel Kim, principal of Daylight Design entitled “Design Thinking.” In it, he shared how design is a way of thinking and an opportunity to find and solve problems. It is an empathetic, altruistic, and creative act that arises from identifying problems from someone else’s perspective and working to solve them. Mr. Kim challenged students to think beyond a particular career field and instead think about how they can choose work where they can use their knowledge and resources to solve problems that impact people. Immediately following his presentation, Mr. Kim led students on a wallet-design exercise to demonstrate the critical steps involved in designing things in response to people’s needs. View the video recording of the opening session.

After the opening session, students attended three different career workshops based on their interests. Our accomplished presenters offered their insights and perspectives representing fields such as automotives, business management, counseling, dental, engineering, environmental science, fashion, finance, foreign service, hospitality, human rights, IT, marketing, medicine, non-profit, performing arts, pharmaceuticals, sports management, and more. The students were privileged to not only hear from professionals representing global companies but also from entrepreneurs who had started their own companies.

Following the three workshops, 9th and 10th grade students reconvened in their homerooms to debrief and process all the information they had taken in that morning. After lunch, the 11th and 12th grade students participated in a “passing the baton” session designed to have seniors offer advice and tips to juniors on how to navigate senior year. 

View photos of Career Day 2021.

YISS would like to thank Career Day Co-Chairs Betty Chung and Taylor Peterson and Committee members Dr. Aquil Bayyan, Travis Hostetter, Joon Myong, Rachel Dooley, Jinhi Sohn, Christine Lee, and Jin Park, as well as all of the presenters who took time out of their day to inspire and guide our students in designing their lives.