· Previous professional experiences that have had a profound effect: Before I started college, my parents wanted me to excel in healthcare knowing its high demand. The path to health care and eventual employment in a notable hospital setting seemed less risky than the one of Art and design. A few networking events and some LinkedIn leads later I came across an opportunity to start a Biomedical Engineering startup in South Florida with two investors willing to mentor me in a field I wasn’t familiar with. Luckily this new venture I was undertaking had a somewhat speculative risk. I made sure they were mostly in my favor thanks to the connections my investors had in the industry, and my background in health care. My hard work and diligence paid off slowly teaching myself the mechanics of the industry through the engineers we would hire. I remember watching how they would calibrate medical devices from pumps to life-saving equipment in awe. And with the same tenacity absorbing all the medical jargon in the Biomed world. I was adamant about doing my best and being the best even if that meant leaving my creative dreams behind. We started the business almost four years ago as a small minority women-owned business in the corner of a business complex. Five biomedical engineers and six technicians later we are still scaling and have since expanded our office from that small corner to the entire business building. Currently, we are a nationally recognized Biomed and medical supply company for some of the largest healthcare facilities in both the civilian and government sector. Yet through out all the achievement I felt the only sense of raw passion was when I collaborated with my engineers in delivering problem solving services to the hospital we served. Their job was to service devices in a hospital at a micro level and I would bridge that gap by identifying problems and finding opportunities in product service at a large-scale. Working hand in hand with the engineers in articulating the hospital need for turnover I would use design through projective process in creating a plan that would work in the most practical sense. This moment of free creative problem solving was the highlight of my job. It gave me an opportunity to realize that although at times my approach was unconventional it would work. My systematic methodology I had adapted from working with engineers and my innate out of the box idea would come to together to solve some of the most challenging issues. Little did I know that this minor stroke of self-awareness would one day have me consider architecture. Your current strengths and weaknesses in reaching your goal. I realized my creative talents in design could not flourish under the pressures of work. I would constantly leave the office feeling drained in a profession my heart was not set on. In this I learned my weakness was how far I was willing to neglect the urge for creativity, and in exchange it jeopardized my sense of purpos.