We asked some of the brightest folks from within the community to reflect back on their days in school and to share with us a story of when they learned a particularly important or impactful lesson. We’ve shared highlights below.

Oyin Antwi

Over the past decade in my career and entrepreneurial pursuits, my ethos includes a commitment to developing innovative products, services, and systems that promote resourcefulness and efficiency, while enhancing the ‘human experience’. This ethos was forged in part from an impactful lesson I learned during my academic journey studying Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE). Read more>>

Melany McKnight

From the time I was 8 years old until I was 18, I participated in 4-H in El Paso County. I absolutely loved every aspect of 4-H and it taught me so many life skills. Some of the skills it taught me included hard work, responsibility, public speaking, respect and more. I started out showing sheep when I was 8 and soon after fell in love with showing cattle and participating in cake decorating. Read more>>

Kevin Senzaki

By the time I was in high school, I was firmly set on pursuing a creative career. Although I’m now working as a sound designer, at the time my main interest and notable “talent” was in the fine arts, mostly pencil and charcoal drawing, and I was considering a job in illustration or animation. I was taking the art courses available at my high school, but I did not get along well at all with the instructor, who I found narrow-minded and judgmental. Read more>>

Forrest Givens

So I have a very unorthodox path when it comes to my educational journey. I’ll start with my high school experience, which was straight out of a movie. I went to Duke Ellington School of The Arts, and it was literally like “High School Musical”; people singing in the halls, musicians practicing in the stairwells, galleries, fashion shows, anything you can imagine, it was there. Read more>>

Ana Rondón

When I studied my specialization in marketing issues, Sales’s teacher, recommended a book, was nice, but the most outstanding thing was to read, at the end, “Steve Jobs’ speech” , and the most power prhase was “You can´t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backeards. This phrase made me feel that any place, wherever I was, doing things different from my career or interests, would lead me at some point to be where I wanted. Read more>>