Woodlands Academy students got some fun and unique insights about travel, following their passions and adapting to new environments from a college senior born in India and raised in Singapore who now attends school in the United States. Driven by intersecting passions for art, business and design, Sachi Shah is an interdisciplinary creator pursuing a self-defined major – Leadership in Creative Enterprise – at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating this spring, she will be working at Adobe in San Francisco, California, as a product manager for Adobe Creative Cloud.

Shah’s Jan. 13 presentation to Woodlands Academy – done via Zoom as the school was in a planned two-week period of remote learning following the Christmas and New Year holidays – consisted of seven lessons for students to consider:

1.      Spend time reflecting on your unique cultural identity.

2.      No passion is invalid.

3.      Steer your passions; don’t let them guide you.

4.      You are your best advocate.

5.      Ask for help: Your network enables opportunities – “reach out to people you aspire to be”

6.      People are the best textbooks.

7.      Don’t rush the process –things will unfold as they’re meant to; embrace the indirect paths events such as COVID-19 may force you to take.

This Global Conversation, hosted by Woodlands Academy’s Center for Global Studies and opened to all students, concluded with a question-and-answer session.

Shah is a former student of Center for Global Studies Director Jessica Campbell, who taught her 6^th, 7^th and half of 8^th grade humanities classes at the Overseas Family School in Singapore from 2010-2012. Campbell taught at the Singapore school from January 2009 to December 2012.

“Sachi was always an incredibly gifted student and loved to incorporate personal artwork into school projects,” Campbell said. “It has been lovely that she always expressed interest in keeping in touch with me over the years. We just developed a close bond, I think, because I taught her for 2.5 years in a row. In a middle school with over 800 students, this rarely happened.”

As a self-described "third culture kid," Shah has been influenced by this multi-faceted cultural experience in her art practice and is excited to continue to find intersections between art and business working in her new home, San Francisco.

In her spare time, Shah is typically busy exploring rooftops, practicing martial arts or grabbing coffee with her friends.