Girls Who Invest
July 2019
At this time, I was taking a gap year from the media/advertising industry and exploring the freelance world as a data/information designer. I had a wonderful opportunity to work with a non-profit called Girls Who Invest that’s “dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry.” They were looking to have a custom presentation template on program recommendations during their team retreat.
Type: Presentation
Tools: PowerPoint
The Process
I worked closely with the Head of Programs to build their template from nearly scratch. Because she needed this with a quick turnaround of two business days, I asked her to initially send all inspiration materials that she wanted to see in the deck. Materials included the retreat agenda, standard operating procedure manuals, program template, photo rosters, syllabi, and the Girls Who Invest style guide. After receiving the materials, I drafted the first version of the deck and sent it back to her for her review. We went through the review process a few times before we came to the final version below.
What I Learned
Since this was one of my first freelance projects outside the media/advertising industry, the biggest lesson I took from this was learning how to project manage and communicate with clients from a different industry. Diving into the world of Girls Who Invest, immersing myself with their language, and learning about their vision was the most fun intellectual challenge I had felt in a long time! It was like new synapses were forming in my brain 🧠
My family taught me to always be curious about the world and to always continue learning. What made the freelance world look romantic to me was having the opportunities to work with different clients from various industries. The one other lesson I learned from this project was that I became passionate about helping mission-driven orgs visualize their data. I started feeling jaded with the media/advertising industry because I felt like my work accumulated to a 15-second television ad. This project taught me that there are other industries that don’t have the wealth of data expertise like the tech or media/advertising world does. I knew I wanted to continue working on data projects with social good initiatives.