Olympians Academy Leadership Wings Scholarship

As a student in the College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I have had ample opportunities to further my educational and professional goals through scholarships, international exposure, and participation in highly recognized student organizations. I have joined numerous student organizations including the American Marketing Association (AMA), AMAze, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Greg and Lisa Smith Global Leadership Scholars (GLS), and the Executive Leadership Council (ELC). In addition, GLS and ELC have allowed me to enhance my professional goals through exposure to numerous businesses, executives, and like-minded students. I am pursuing a degree in marketing with a concentration in international business with the goal of attaining a role in a Fortune 500 company at an executive level. To achieve this goal, I plan to make the most of all international experiences through the GLS program where I will intern in London during the Spring 2024 semester. International experiences such as this will introduce me to global business operations and enhance my marketing education by offering opportunities to learn various aspects of marketing and conducting business in global environments. Furthermore, I will be able to present myself in front of over 20 business executives at the ELC symposium in October. Post graduation, I plan to pursue a Master in Business Administration (MBA) and a career that centers on international business and marketing. Through a career in marketing and international business, I desire to diversify the marketing industry and the percentage of African Americans in executive or leadership positions. This comes as both occupations produce under ten percent of African Americans in those positions in their respective field. In order to tackle this systematic obstacle, I am pursuing opportunities that will allow me to achieve a goal in an industry that is not designed for People of Color to succeed.

I am Rukhshona Isomova, an international student from Uzbekistan who came to study her Bachelor's with a full scholarship at Maryville College, Tennessee at the age of 16. From day one at college, despite the difficulties faced, I did my best to overcome them; in reality, those challenges shaped me into who I am today. Throughout school years, I have realized my aptitude for being a true leader and organizing things efficiently by attending and helping with the execution of different events at school. Being a leader taught me to compete and my competitiveness was deeply shaped and developed when I regularly partook and won in contests, olympiads and projects. The important lesson I learned through experience is that leadership is not all about competition, but also about helping and guiding people toward achieving their goals, supporting, motivating the communities around me and making impactful changes in the lives of people. These are the main reasons why I highly respect leadership and because leadership aligns with my goal to make a positive influence locally and globally, I declared my major as Business and later as International Relations. My leadership and organizational skills came in handy once I started my freshman year in 2022. As a Diversity Scholar, I had the privilege of representing my culture, encouraging others to do one, organizing cultural/culinary shows, becoming a team lead in GCO, winning the annual Talent Show, getting awards for my work and being recognized as Student Leader of the Year. This fall, as a humble future diplomat, I cannot wait to continue my role as iMentor to an international student, and MC Ambassador, plan to dedicate my time to community service, give speeches about my study abroad experience to youth, especially females in society, motivate them and strengthen the bonds between nations.

Throughout my educational and professional experiences, I have realized that a good leader is someone who empowers their peers to reach their full potential while ensuring that their well-being is prioritized. I have realized this as someone who has worked on various teams, and also as a leader myself. I am currently a business technology consultant at Deloitte working as a lead tester to help develop and deploy web applications for our clients. This upcoming fall, I will be attending Stanford to work towards my master's in engineering science and management. I hope to continue to develop my technical and leadership skills, in hopes of becoming a product manager within healthcare. Before I began working at Deloitte full-time, I was a biomedical engineering student at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. I had many internships and projects in which I worked within interdisciplinary teams to solve complex challenges. As an engineering intern at Data in Science Technologies, I collaborated with scientists at Einstein Medical College and software engineers to implement a ticketing system to help minimize system errors. At Children's National Hospital in DC, I worked with physicians, social workers, and psychologists to connect low-income families with basic services that helped address their needs and illnesses. For my senior design capstone project, I worked with other students to design and manufacture a height-adjustable table for students with disabilities, which included interviewing students, implementing sensors, and designing a user interface system. My undergraduate experiences have helped me become a successful leader at Deloitte. Working with people with different knowledge areas than my own, and even from various cultures and backgrounds, has allowed me to acknowledge that all my colleagues and teams have unique and individual strengths which can be leveraged to optimize solutions. As a lead tester at Deloitte, I work with our leadership team to ensure that new features are being accurately tested and will work as expected when they are deployed to production and used by end users. I work with new testers to support their onboarding and communicate daily with our teams to ensure that they are on track for delivery. Communicating frequently with my teams helps to avoid delays by discussing potential roadblocks early in the development process. It also allows me to develop professional relationships with my teams that prioritizes their well-being. Personally, I prioritize my own well-being above my work and have realized that by doing so, I am more productive compared to those that do not strive towards work-life balance. I encourage my teams to do the same by blocking off time each day to step away from their work and eat lunch or perform activities that help them relax. I also encourage them to take meetings outside and during walks if possible. I believe that this has helped our teams be successful in our work. I enjoy being a leader on my team and look forward to continue to build on my existing skillset at Stanford. I like interacting with my colleagues and learning about their different work processes and how they like to unwind. It helps me understand how I can empower them towards developing their weaknesses and leveraging their strengths. Working alongside other strong leaders helps me develop new strategies to solve challenges across large teams and how to delegate or teach future leaders. I hope to take these experiences and new studies with me into the realm of healthcare, where there are many interdisciplinary challenges that can be solved by leaders who understand technology, socio-economics, and a team's well-being.