June 18, 2022

THE GOLDEN GOOSE  

During my first week at the Incubator space known as Aquillius Corporation, it was important for me to reaffirm my vision that seizing this opportunity was akin to seizing the beating wings of a Golden Goose. So with much joy, I am pleased to confirm with you that the chance I was given to work as an intern in the Aquillius Catalyst program is a golden opportunity, and Aquillius is my Golden Goose: a gift that just keeps on giving. 

The takeaway from that, however, should not be that my name is Jack. My name is most definitely Henry, but I’m a little less certain if a good story always begins with a dramatic monologue. Nevertheless, this one does, so bear with me!

A little bit about myself and my geographical history: I was born on the soil of the East Coast. All seven pounds of my baby fat called that ground home, but ideas of home change with perspective. Much like the view from the top of a magic beanstalk, I learned that up in the clouds home looks less like a house and more like an ant mound. As a seven-year-old kid, I took to the skies and seized the beating wings of a jet engine, departed from my East Coast stomping grounds, and looked ahead towards Midwestern cornfields, cold winters, and beautiful sunsets. This week I’ve taken to the skies once again, leaving my new home and, for the first time in my life, stepping foot onto the West Coast.

?CALIFORNIA LOVE?

It’s not uncommon to experience fear, discomfort, and homesickness when traveling 1,841 miles away. However, as an adventurer at heart, I had none of these symptoms. I’m sure if I did, my newfound and capable family members: Kenny, the Anesthesiologist Assistant, and Dionne, the entrepreneur and multicultural hair stylist of 24 years (my Mama D), would iron out the sad wrinkles from my face with a hot plate of Haitian and Louisianan cuisine- topped with the same appetite for exploration they showed me on my first day in California. We hit up Mission Beach in spectacular fashion!

I’m discovering for myself that Escondido, North San Diego County, and Southern California, in general, are such a beautiful blend of diversity, entertainment, and good energy people. I didn’t realize it beforehand, but a little sand, souvenirs, and aquatic life was a much-needed mental weight off my shoulder in preparing for my internship at Aquillius the day after.

THE BEAUTIFUL BIG PICTURE

Aquillius is a start-up biotechnology company based in Rancho Bernardo County, San Diego. Its mission is to accelerate the integration of life sciences and engineering​ to create innovative solutions that can improve human health.​

The company focuses on streamlining product development towards commercialization by supporting early R&D to manufacturing to market strategy. They also provide an extensive incubator space for companies within the STEM field.

Where I plus 14 other STEAM students from across California, the United States, and across countries come into this beautiful big picture is through the Aquillius Summer Internship Catalyst.

https://www.aquillius.com/catalyst

(You can see a cool picture of me and all the interns and staff here)

In biology, a catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction. This program is a catalyst full of substance and a wealth of resources such as a knowledgeable and professional staff from varying career fields, a 25,000 ft² facility (furnished with state-of-the-art equipment, high-quality lab space, office areas, and conference rooms), multi-weekly meetings (with successful entrepreneurs, engineers, inventors, investors, CEOs, etc), and of course the intangibles of a friendly, fun, and comfortable work environment. One that continually pushes us to rack our brains and experience discomfort as we strive to provide solutions to real-world problems starting from the ideation phase, to prototyping, to a feasibility study, and business model proposal. This all gradually leads up to the 10th week where we conduct a Pitch Day Competition with a very generous $10,000 grand prize split between the winning team on Pitch Day. *Gulp*

VALUE PROPOSITION AND IDEATION

At the start of the internship, I was self-conscious about leaving a good first impression. I would soon find my nerves thawed not by the California sun, but by the warmth of our staff and my fellow interns. As our conversations gained momentum throughout the week, the kinetic energy of our rapport melted the iceberg of our unfamiliarity to sizes that I dare say couldn’t even sink a toy ship. After a great orientation, we set sail right away into uncharted waters.

This week was a big emphasis on value proposition and ideation. A value proposition is a short statement on why buyers should choose your product or service. The importance of a value proposition is that we use it as a starting point and then expand into our customer profile where we seek to understand a customer’s pains and the gains we want them to have when using the product or service which we are creating.

Ideation came into the mix when we were presented with 12 possible problems to provide unique solutions for. To name a few: back pain, declining bee population, helping the blind/visually impaired, food allergies, composting, water shortage, etc. It’s been chiseled into my brain this week that when ideating it’s more important to thoroughly understand the problems of our customers rather than jumping quickly to a solution. Dr. MyPhuong Le has emphasized to us that once we think we have a solution, it’s easy to tunnel vision ourselves and ignore unique angles of approaching the problem. An analogy she gave us is that our problem looks like a circle, but if you move around and look at it from unique angles you realize it’s a sphere, so we have to approach it from different perspectives. On top of this, understanding the competitive landscape and the complaints customers have with already existing products are crucial.

This week has definitely been a challenge in narrowing down what problem we want to tackle and making sure that it is relevant to each of the experts within our group as well as doing enough research into the problems at hand. However, this is where clear communication and teamwork come into the mix. I’m really proud of team Scatterplot and the communication we’ve been having with each other. At the end of each day, we’ve made it our mission to retrospect and evaluate what went wrong, what went well, and what we could do better (Thank you to Becky Herman and Mark Matson from IOWA BIG for teaching me about retrospecting). Our communication really helped us overcome frustrations with narrowing down our topic.

The Land of Giants

The week ended triumphantly with an amazing presentation from Dr. Richard Lin.

https://www.biocom.org/people/richard-lin/

(Wow, he has quite the resume)

To get valuable insight from someone that has been through the trenches; understands his customer profile, their pains, and gains; and has a clear knowledge of the competitors made everything so relevant to what we learned this week. The cherry on top was the make-your-own Boba bars, delicious food, an opportunity to network with those who came to hear Dr. Richard Lin speak, as well as partaking in some energetic karaoke! We couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the week.

I’d like to end this blog by thanking Cornell College and the Career Fair during which I discovered the Aquillius internship.

A very special thanks to my donors and Cornell College alums Dr. Karen Reimer Bahnick ’62 and Dr. Donald Bahnick ’62 who made this all possible.

My Loving Parents, Family, and Friends, for their unrelenting support, delight, and faith in my purpose at this internship.

Mark Kendall, the Associate Director of  Career Coaching & Experiential Learning at the Berry Career Institute, for taking the time to talk with me and directly show me this internship at the Career Fair and for playing a massive role throughout the entire process in preparing me for this Golden Goose opportunity.

Jodi Schafer, the Senior Director of the BCI, for preparing me for questions to expect during the interview, casting a beacon of light on the shadows of my doubts, and a wealth of wisdom to take advantage of this opportunity.

Andrea Lohf, the Associate Director of Operations & Career Coaching at the BCI, for the support, guidance, and patience throughout my funding, logistics, and blog process.

Many thanks to the Alumni of Color Association, TaSheena Cunningham Rimmer ’06, and her husband and my mentor John Rimmer for all the support and mentorship they have given me in the months leading up to this internship and still to this point.

Dionne and Kenny for creating an atmosphere I’m proud to call home, all the way here on the West Coast.

Aquillius team and interns who are already making this a very practical, memorable, and impactful internship.

As I intern in the state of tech titans and take on big challenges that threaten to flatten me like an ant mound, I realize it’s easy to focus on the giant problems that can break you. Instead, I focus on why I’m here and the giants all around me who both support and build me up every day. As Sir Isaac Newton once wisely said:

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”