What it's Like Being a 21 Year Old President
My reflection on leading Cornell AppDev, an open-source, student-run project team at Cornell that builds products to improve the lives of the community.
It’s fitting that I’m writing this piece in Gates Hall, the home base of AppDev’s operations and the overall Computer & Information Science department. Every Sunday morning, Freshman to Senior year, I’d make the journey to Gates for AppDev weekly meetings, and now I’m finishing my story in the same place it all started…
"Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else—through hard work." —Vince Lombardi
I’ll go more in-depth about my overall Cornell AppDev experience in my entire college reflection piece, but without a doubt, joining AppDev was my greatest decision in college. I spent all but one semester on the team and learned more from the work and people than I did in any class. On AppDev, I learned, struggled, laughed, sang, and stressed (a lot). But most of all, I grew in every aspect imaginable, and that’s the best takeaway from any experience.
Pre-Team Lead
I spent my first two semesters (Spring & Fall 2022) of AppDev on the MarkOps team, leading the growth of Resell. I tabled, quarter-carded, interviewed, and ran my own marketing initiatives— all things I had never done before. Those two semesters helped me become a more confident speaker, be comfortable with rejection, and taught me the importance of first impressions.
For the next two semesters (Spring & Fall 2023) I spent leading the Eatery team as its Pod Lead. This was the most fun I had on AppDev because I had the opportunity to dictate the roadmap for Cornell’s most popular student-run app and positively shape the experience of my team members. I tell people it was the perfect balance of having leadership responsibilities while still remaining hands-on with the rest of the group. This experience taught me how to manage a team and product effectively, and that I have a true passion for leadership and high-responsibility roles.
Why Team Lead?
As my fourth semester on AppDev neared an end, I had to decide on my next role on the team. Was I going to re-join the MarkOps team or did I want to take the leap of faith and lead the organization that had already given me so much? I reflected on my past experiences, what aspects of life I wanted to improve on, and my career aspirations to manage a large team in the future. I chose the latter.
I wanted to be the team lead for two reasons.
First, I was (and still am) in love with this organization. AppDev is an organization that defined my college experience and allowed me to grow in countless ways. I’d been blessed with awesome mentors and challenging work, and I wanted to enable other members to be able to curate their own best experiences. I also hoped to solve problems I saw on the team and make impactful changes.
Second, I saw plenty of room for myself to grow from the position. As Pod Lead, I learned how to develop a product vision and steer the team in that direction while at the same time building a meaningful culture to ensure an unforgettable semester. Team Lead was the natural progression to exercise those skills on a 50-person scale (AppDev = mini startup). I also wanted to get comfortable learning how to solve organizational problems through the intricate fabric of bureaucracy and leadership that structures the organization. Lastly, I wanted to improve my public speaking skills— thankfully, presenting to the entire team each week did that for me.
So with my mind made up and the team officially supporting me, I embarked on the year-long role of being slide-maker shaman, the p-card person, and the occasional singer :)
Vice Team Lead (Spring 2024)
I had three weeks over Winter break to prepare for the rollercoaster ride of Vice Team Lead before being thrust into it. I came into the role with sky-high expectations that it was going to be lax with some work here and there and meetings on Sunday. However, I quickly realized that it is extremely logistic-heavy, I need to manage the team and everyone behind the scenes, and be on call at all times. I vividly remember, during the break, sitting on the couch at home with college basketball playing in the background and reading documents on finances, AppDev policies, and how to book rooms. Overwhelmed was an understatement. However, I was lucky to have Archit as my mentor and Team Lead, and he assisted me by answering my multiple texts each day. Moreover, as with any leadership role, I believe no amount of preparation compares to actually doing the job and figuring it out on the spot.
I recall being nervous before our first general meeting of the semester because that was going to be my introduction as Vice Team Lead. The presentation went well, but I was also motivated to improve my speaking pace, audience control, and internal emotions— I had ~30 more tries including giving our information session pitch a bit tipsy since it was right after Wines class ended (aced that pitch btw). Over the semester, my public speaking skills improved the most out of every area I wanted to get better at. I was comfortable speaking in front of the entire team, chatting with prospective members, and resolving conflicts with anyone.
One of the most crucial lessons I learned as Vice Team Lead was how to manage conflicts (internal and external) effectively. For the first half of my Vice Team Lead semester, I would stress out when a conflict arose and I didn’t know how to immediately remedy it, and instead of solving it myself, I would resort to asking Archit. I knew I had to change because I wasn’t being the problem-solver I wanted to develop into, and Archit was going to leave me the keys to the team in just a few months. With hard work, I eventually got to the point where I was defusing fires with ease and providing alternative solutions my initial one didn’t work out. I’d like to say I cultivated the skill of FITFO (figure it the f*ck out), because when you’re the person everyone is looking to for answers, you have to figure it out one way or another.
My Vice Team Lead semester also taught me how to balance culture with productivity; something that all organizations struggle with and only a few get right. Doing this for Eatery was simple, but it took some time to understand how to achieve harmony for a 50+ person team building 5 apps in addition to being full-time students. Archit and I worked to bring back the scrappy culture that laid the foundation of the organization ten years ago while maintaining a light-hearted culture. My philosophy on accomplishing this feat stemmed from the idea of camaraderie and putting culture first. If we could cultivate a welcoming environment where everyone felt comfortable learning and contributing, the self-starter mentality would form on its own. As a result, the team was able to launch 2 apps for the first time in over 6 years, redefine product thinking with the introduction of the AppDev ecosystem, achieve significant user growth (with an average increase of 450 users per active app), introduce a powerful new engineering framework emphasizing robustness and quality in conjunction with agility, and greatly improve communication, accountability, and documentation amongst leads. Quite a productive semester!
I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, but I learned a tremendous amount during my Vice Team Lead semester— way more than the three main lessons I just listed. Also, I had one of the coolest experiences during my Vice Team Lead semester— all the project team leads were invited to a dinner with the Cornell Board of Trustees and I was able to meet some wildly intellectual people, including Howard Morgan! The takeaways set me up to take the helm and implement my vision for the team. Onto Fall 2024…
Team Lead (Fall 2024)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out a few people who helped me get to this point in my AppDev journey. Mateo Weiner, Noah Solomon, Tedi Mitiku, and Conner Swenberg were all influential in motivating me to take the leap of faith to lead the team. Without them, there is no me.
My Team Lead responsibilities started the day after Spring 2024 ended. I’d been brainstorming ways to improve AppDev’s policies, meetings, operations, development, etc. for multiple semesters, and after adding to this list with team feedback from prior semesters, I was stoked to get my hands back in the game. I spent nights during the Summer working on AppDev improvements, calling Jennifer to refine our semester goals and vision, and meeting with the Pod Leads to ensure they were prepared to create delightful products for the Cornell community.
The three pillars we set our vision around were building, culture, and alumni. The North Star was to continue the scrappy mentality of the team while also creating strong connections between the members and getting the alumni back involved with the team. Implementing Sentry along with creating dedicated dev & prod servers and implementing CI/CD for each pod, created a more effective engineering environment for the team. As Vice Team Lead and especially as Team Lead, I realized that much of the work done in my role goes on behind the scenes. It was my job to guarantee that all rooms were booked, all receipts were properly submitted, we were in good standing with the College of Engineering, and much more. These are just some of the maintenance work and don’t cover the work to expand the team’s opportunities. I write this because understanding this notion gives me much more appreciation for other people in leadership roles. Every leader does more work than they’re recognized for, and I want to make sure they are appreciated.
One aspect of the Team Lead role that I wasn’t fully prepared for was being a quality mentor to Jennifer, the Vice Team Lead. I was so caught up with my own ideas for the org that I accidentally threw Jennifer into the deep end of leadership. What is a good leader if they aren’t helping others along the way? I’ll never forget the time when Jennifer and I skipped subteam meeting and had a deep conversation about AppDev, leadership styles, and why we do what we do. It was the most I had felt like a mentor to her because we were having a meaningful conversation, with each of us learning, instead of me just telling her what to do. As the semester went on, I became even more passionate about imparting my knowledge to the rest of the team. Whether during general meetings, pod lead meetings, subteam lead standups, or casual one-on-one conversations, I made it my goal to lend a helping hand in any way possible— just like my mentors had done for me.
The most important lesson I learned while in the Team Lead role during my final semester on AppDev was to truly enjoy each moment. Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” After six semesters of being part of this organization, my time was coming to an end. I had especially worked my ass off the past two semesters as Vice Team Lead and Team Lead, attempting to improve the experience for current and future members of AppDev. However, I still made time to poke my head above the water and enjoy the time with people who had shaped my college experience. I cherished the last Work Session, the last Sunday gatherings, and the last Walker meeting(?). Before I knew it, I was standing at the front of Gates G01 giving my senior speech and thinking back to my first AppDev meeting freshman year where I introduced myself to the team in the exact same spot. I felt an immense wave of joy and gratitude for the team. These 50+ people were not just a team to me anymore, they were my family. I was the leader of a family building delightful products for its users, and that’s a pretty awesome thing.
Glad you enjoyed it! It was the best part of my time at Cornell.