Dr. Syed receiving a blue lobster from the Dean of the college, Jane Carreiro, DO'88. The blue lobster is the college's highest honor.
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curriculum and the sampling that one has in multiple fields to not only enhance one’s knowledge of medicine but also to help a young student find their path along their medical journey. This concept was just so straightforward, I could not grasp why this was not applied for all students and at earlier stages when they need to see the true world from behind the four walls of the classroom.
With a passion for education and mentorship and a need to reach students, I established Align Us Inc, which is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization that provides career mentorship program to high school students. The goal was simple, give students access to industry leaders, motivated mentors, career titans who could then help shape the future for a young person. The students enrolled in the mentorship program are paired up with a mentor one-on-one, who then with the guidance of our mentorship curriculum and training provides invaluable career guidance to the students. We established a robust mentorship curriculum which provides a foundation for our mentors and mentees. High school students in grades 10-12 are able to see what a day in the life of a particular industry looks like to see if that career may be the right fit for them. This unique career experience is not something that a student can. By getting students outside of the classroom and into the real world, they can see what careers exist out there, what the path into a certain field of study looks like and what careers would they be best suited for. Students apply for the mentorship sessions which take place twice a year in the fall or spring session. Their application also consists of an industry rank list which allows them to lists the industry choices in preference. Students are generally matched with their top five industry choices based on timing of application, number of mentor-student rank choices in a particular mentorship cycle and geographic proximity of mentors to mentees. Students who may not receive their top choice are invited to participate again for an opportunity to match with industry of choice. The program has been quite successful with tremendous outreach and constant need to broaden/increase our mentor database to keep up with the high demands/wanted of the mentees.
In addition to our one-on-one mentorship program we provide various workshops for students in grades 9-12, which include college essay writing workshop, resume writing workshop, public speaking workshop, financial literacy workshop to name a few. This year, Align Us held its’ very first conference titled Dream it, See it, Be it! Pathway to Your Future. The event was a unique leadership conference that was for students between the ages of thirteen to twenty-two. The conference brought together renowned industry titans from across the country and world, Tedx speakers, leaders in business, finance, medicine, media & arts to speak directly and candidly to our students. The sessions consisted of “Mastering Public Speaking, Getting Ahead and Staying There, When Passion Drives Creativity, How to Ace an Interview, Be More to Achieve More & Into the Lion’s Den” a unique competition where students had the opportunity to pitch their business proposals to our serial entrepreneurs, finance and business leaders with a $1000 grand prize for the winning pitch. The conference also allowed for ample networking so that students could interact one-on-one with our mentors to gain insight from them.
The program continues to grow and is rewarding for both our mentors and mentees who are matriculated at prestigious universities, Stamford, Berkley and NYU to name a few. Mentors have the reward of giving back to students and helping to shape a young person’s future, as well as being able to network with colleagues in same and different industries.
The future goal of Align Us is to continue to grow across the country and gain more mentors in order to be able to provide much needed career guidance for our youth. Additional goals would be to host yearly leadership conferences across various cities in the United States in order to reach students where they are.
The future goal of Align Us is to continue to grow across the country and gain more mentors in order to be able to provide much needed career guidance for our youth. Additional goals would be to host yearly leadership conferences across various cities in the United States in order to reach students where they are.