Students
Tech Skills or Soft Skills, Which Matter More? The Answer May Surprise You
There’s a lot of buzz in the tech world that soft skills help employees succeed and move up the corporate ladder as much as, if not more than, tech skills. In fact, two recent workplace studies by Google revealed the top seven skills that indicate career success at the tech giant are all soft skills, …
Young, Gifted and Black: How Making the Most of an Opportunity Helped Land Me a Job on Wall Street.

“When the door of opportunity opened, I walked through it.” I remember when I first realized things were different for me. I grew up, like many others, in a low-income household in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I saw first-hand the barriers and roadblocks tied to opportunity. But when I was in eighth grade, a girl on my …
2020 Think IT Scholarship Spotlight: Pa Gar Vang

York Solutions, in partnership with Genesys Works Twin Cities, the Think IT Association, and Wallin Education Partners, is excited to announce the 2020 Think IT Scholarship winners: Veronica Venegas, Sue Xiong, Faiza Mah, and Pa Gar Vang. In our final feature, we are excited to spotlight Pa Gar Vang, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota who hopes to become a web designer. As a Class of 2018 Genesys Works young professional, Pa Gar interned at Abbott and attended high school at Johnson Aerospace & Engineering High School. She also earned a college internship at Target and recently wrote a guest blog about forging her career path in web design.
If I could go back in time, here’s what I’d tell myself
How asking a question was also my breakthrough moment

Hello everyone! My name is Alexis Williams, and I intern at Medtronic in the Global Communications IT. Throughout my internship, I have learned so much that I don’t think I would have ever had the chance to learn without this experience. I am very thankful that I got this opportunity of a lifetime and had the chance to learn so much. On the first day I met my team, we had a lunch together. They asked me what I wanted to get out of this internship. I told them I wanted to get better at interacting with people.
2020 Think IT Scholarship Spotlight: Faiza Mah

York Solutions, in partnership with Genesys Works Twin Cities, the Think IT Association, and Wallin Education Partners, is excited to announce the 2020 Think IT Scholarship winners: Veronica Venegas, Sue Xiong, Faiza Mah, and Pa Gar Vang. In the third of four features, we are excited to spotlight Faiza Mah, a first-year student who just finished up her year at Minneapolis College and will be transferring to the University of Minnesota this fall to major in Computer Science. As a Class of 2019 Genesys Works young professional, Faiza interned at Medtronic and attended high school at Columbia Heights High School. She was also the feature of last year’s Annual Report for her outstanding internship achievements.
From “wandering junior” to young professional and finding her passion in business technology

Before Genesys Works, I was a wandering junior. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to be “when I grew up.” I never even understood what it meant when people asked, “What are you passionate about?” or instructed, ”Just do something you’re good at.” Coming from a low-income family, I was never exposed to many school sports or extracurricular activities. There was just never the time or money for it, and it really led me to feel lost and unhopeful for the future. How would I learn what I was good at if I never really had the chance to explore?
2020 Think IT Scholarship Spotlight: Sue Xiong

York Solutions, in partnership with Genesys Works Twin Cities, the Think IT Association, and Wallin Education Partners, is excited to announce the 2020 Think IT Scholarship winners: Veronica Venegas, Sue Xiong, Faiza Mah, and Pa Gar Vang. In the second of four features, we are excited to spotlight Sue Xiong, a sophomore at Augsburg College majoring in Computer Science. As a Class of 2018 Genesys Works young professional, Sue interned at Capella University and attended high school at Central Senior High School in St. Paul.
How working on technical projects taught more than just technical skills

During my internship at Optum, I had the opportunity to work on a scrum team. A scrum team is a group of people who work together to deliver products, and there are three main parts of any scrum team…. All of the Genesys Works interns on my team are developers, but we all also got a chance to be a scrum master. Throughout the year, my team worked on and learned from several projects.