Navigating Professional Spaces as a Young Adult - Aspen Forum For Community Solutions

(Reposted with permission of the author from the Opportunity Youth United blog of 8/2/19. Be sure to also check out the accompanying piece Tips, Advice and Best Practices: navigating professional spaces as a young adult.)

The first the first professional conference I ever attended was a totally new experience for me. I was 21 and I had never really traveled without my family or friends. I had definitely never been anywhere like Aspen, Colorado, and I had never presented anything about my work outside of my own city. I was proud of our work in Boston, but at the conference, I had so much anxiety about being in a space with so many people, very few of them were around my own age, that it was hard to relax and share our story. It seemed like everyone already sort of knew each other and on top of that, the agenda for the convening looked like a college class schedule I was trying to navigate, which felt overwhelming. It seemed like there was no one I could turn to to ask questions or be reassured in what I thought I was supposed to do. What turned the whole conference around for me was being welcomed warmly by people who recognized me and told me they were excited to meet me. Some people introduced me to others and created space for me. I could ask my questions, attend sessions with familiar faces, and didn’t have to sit alone at breakfast the next morning. Now, years later, I feel like I am on the other side of things. I look forward to convenings, I know what to expect, I know which friends I’ll be fortunate enough to see, and I know which of the “adult crowd” are our allies. Still, every time I go to a convening, I see someone who has the same look in their eyes that I must have had when I attended my first conference—the scared and nervous feeling you try to hide so you can perform as your best “work-self.” That’s why, as part of the planning team for the youth leaders portion of the Aspen Opportunity Youth Forum convenings, I wanted to create a resource for rising leaders who feel the same mix of nervousness and uncertainty that I felt when I first entered this space. Working with others on the planning committee, I developed a “survival guide” to help new youth leaders feel more comfortable entering professional spaces. I gathered different kinds of advice and wisdom related to networking and leveraging professional spaces to your advantage. Everything on this one-pager is not simply for young people, it’s created by young people. This year, we gave the guide out to all the new youth leaders attending the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions conference in Philadelphia. During our youth leaders meeting, we had a deeper conversation about navigating professional spaces. We talked about our own definitions of what it means to be professional, how to take care of yourself, and how we can all best take information home to help guide our own work. While there’s no roadmap or official guidebook for navigating professional spaces as Opportunity Youth, it’s definitely an ongoing conversation as more spaces welcome (or think they’re welcoming) young adults. It’s important for us to understand that there’s no solution that will make people immediately look past your age when you’re young, and there’s no quick fix for making one’s expertise marketable. But I think the more heads we put together, the more allies we can gain, and the more we talk about how we each try to wade through these waters will lead us closer to those answers and solutions. Similarly, it’s important for the older generations to reflect on the opportunities they were given, how they used those opportunities to get where they are, and to be forthcoming with sharing that.