What do you gain through involvement with Up to Us? In addition to access to world-class leaders, exclusive events, internships, training, and cash prizes, campus competition participants and alumni involved with Up to Us have the opportunity to develop and strengthen their skills through prizes like the Civic Engagement Fellowship, Berkeley Podcasting courses, and Harvard Business School Online courses. Hear from one of our changemakers who got the opportunity to take the Business Analytics course from the Harvard Business School Online.
Up to Us Alum: Bleck Tita
Up to Us Competition Year: Fall 2021
HBS Course Taken this Summer: Business Analytics
Why did you want to participate in this course?
To gain insight into the steps of business data analytics which I can apply in my line of work.
How, if in any way, did Up to Us prepare you for this course?
My participation in Up to Us gave me the ability to plan and execute a campaign that involves mobilizing my fellow students to support a course to better public policy adoption.
Throughout my journey with Up to Us, I learned to partner with different institutions and manage data from participants. This sparked my interest in wanting to learn how I can understand the data I had to execute a future campaign better. So, the HBS course on business analytics seemed like a good learning opportunity.
What did you enjoy most about this course?
I enjoyed the course structure, the richness of the materials, and the real-life examples which were used to explain all the underlying concepts.
What are your key takeaways?
I learned how to collect quality data and which techniques to use to analyze this data. I also learned to use data alone to draw meaningful conclusions but also add certain confounding factors which may have influenced the data. Finally, I learned how to network with other participants from other countries and learned from their ways of approaching a specific problem.
How can you use the lessons learned in this course toward civic engagement?
This HBS experience has chiefly helped to complete my Up to Us learning curve. Initially, I knew how to start, operate and maintain a campaign. Now, I can also add generating, analyzing and interpreting data gotten from a specific campaign cycle to my list of skills. I can use those skills to execute an even better campaign to reach more people.
I plan to give back to Up to Us by encouraging my peers to participate in the competition. I will act as a team coach, teaching younger students how to run successful campaigns in the future.