Meet Sophia Staudt!
Transcript
Hello. My name is Sophia Staudt. I am a member of Cohort X of the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute.
On March 11th of 2022, Cohort X is excited to be hosting a conference surrounding our theme of Reimagine Collaboration: Navigating the Evolving Workplace, where we will share our insights into the present and future states of how organizations, employers, employees, and customers work together. As part of our research into this topic, I read the book The Future of Work: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review.
In view of COVID-19, social justice movements, and digital transformation, The Future of Work considers how the new dealing forged between employers and employees will be redefined along a series of three dimensions. These three dimensions calls for organizations that wish to thrive in this new age of working to have a shared purpose surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; radical flexibility in interacting with employees who exert greater control of where, when, and how they work; and deeper connections as employers who support not only the work experience but the life experience of employees.
The Future of Work is comprised of nine different articles divided into four sections titled respectively “The Authentic, Anywhere Office,” “The New Workforce,” “Redefining the Inclusive Organization,” and “The Purpose-Driven Organization.”
The section “The New Workforce” surprised me the most. In this segment of the book, we are made to reconsider who or what makes up our workforce, even discussing how organizations can properly onboard artificial intelligence. I was most intrigured by the article “Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce” by Joseph Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey, and Nithya Vaduganathan. This piece looks at how organizations are more greatly considering employing the talents of freelance or gig workers. In their survey of nearly 700 US businesses that use these workers, 90% of the leaders they surveyed believe these talent platforms, like Upwork and Kaggle, will be central to their ability to compete in the future.
When I first entered college, I never considered remote work as something I would do. This past summer, however, I had my very first software engineering internship that was completely virtual. As I read “Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce,” I realized that similar to how companies and individuals like myself maybe had not seriously considered themselves as being a part of remote or hybrid work now we are beginning to recognize the opportunity that is this specialized on-demand talent.
If you are interested in checking out in more detail what the future of work entails, I would highly recommend this book. I also recommend that you stay tuned to see what Cohort X of the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute has to share in our conference this spring.
Bio
I am from Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory featured in David McCullough’s The Pioneers. Growing up in a historic city, I developed an appreciation for history and learning about where we come from. My latest lifetime project is completing Will and Ariel Durant’s 11-volume set of The Story of Civilization that I began this past year.
As for choosing the computer science field, I have always been drawn to problem-solving. My favorite video game growing up was the Professor Layton series for the Nintendo DS Lite that involves solving various puzzles. In school math has always been one of my favorite subjects. Coming to Miami I thought my personality and interests fit well with studying computer science. Since my first introductory programming class, I fell in love with programming. I could not imagine myself in any other field.
My passion for self-improvement drove me to the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute. While my computer science classes teach me the hard, technical skills I need as a future software engineer, the Institute teaches me how I can navigate this growing field in industry when interacting with others within my team, as well as with other professionals across departments and industries.
Outside of the Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute, I am also involved with the University Honors Program and the College of Engineering and Computing Women’s Mentorship Program.