I originally joined AIS so that I could attend the 2023 ICIS conference in Hyderabad, India. I met many amazing people at the conference which significantly grew my research community. In particular, I found the AIS SIG DITE to be a welcoming and supportive group. I was the student organizer for the 2024 SIG DITE Paper Development Workshop at Case Western Reserve University. After that experience, I decided I wanted to be more involved with building community and serving early career researchers, so I applied for the position of Student Ambassador.

In the Student Ambassador role, I designed and run the SIG DITE Early Career Mentoring program with Dr. Ann-Katrin Eicke. There are around 100 mentees and 50 mentors participating in the program. I am grateful to all the mentors who generously shared their time and to the SIG DITE Board of Directors for their support of the initiative. For research, I was nominated for a best student paper award at ICIS 2025 for my complete paper on implementing Industrial Internet of Things (here is the link if you are interested: https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2024/it_implement/it_implement/12/).

For PhD students who want to stay in academia: Focus on papers that can be published in top-tier journals. As I get closer to the end of my PhD, I am realizing how important this is, despite my desire to explore more topics and work with more people.

I dove so deep into tea during my PhD that I founded and run a club that builds community by bringing graduate students across my university together to enjoy good tea and chocolate. We have been won the Outstanding Graduate Student Club Award for the past three years. The trophies we received are nicer than any sports trophy I won growing up, haha.