My name is Catherine Lyons and I serve as the LIFT at the Antioch/East Contra Costa site. Currently, I’m studying at the University of California Merced to get a degree in biological sciences with an emphasis in microbiology and immunology. After college, I would like to work in a lab at some sort of biopharmaceutical company or biotechnology company. Overall, I would say that my career goal is to end up working in some sort of lab somewhere, and as long as I’m doing that, I’ll be satisfied, though if I could work for a company like Bayer or Genentech that would be ideal. I applied to the Leader In Training Field (LIFT) position because last year in the Energy Specialist (ES) position I didn’t feel like I gained enough experience in areas that I wanted to such as administrative tasks, organization of a team, and being assigned multiple tasks specific to me. Through the LIFT position, I feel like I have the opportunity to do all of that and more, which will give me well-rounded skills that will reflect in all job positions that I accept in the future.

Thus far, I have only gotten the chance to practice my leadership skills during training week when I was given the responsibility of going through the powerpoint training with the Energy Specialists. In the future, I will also be giving the instructional trainings to the E.S.’s weekly for the eco-literacy training, which will give me more practice at making sure everyone in a group I’m instructing is on the same metaphorical page. This experience will be useful if I’m leading a research group in a lab. Currently, my biggest obstacle preventing me from achieving my career goal is: lack of experience/lack of a degree, and since no one but myself can help me to get my degree, Rising Sun is helping me add experience to my resume to show that I have a unique and well-rounded skill set that will be beneficial to my future employers.

Written by:

Catherine Lyons