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About Me
Hello,
My name is Wesley Reed and I am a fourth year IT Student with an emphasis in Software Development and Cyber Security at the University of Cincinnati. I am also enrolled in the IT Accelerated Program to get my masters in IT at the same time as my bachelors degree.
All my life, curiosity has driven my learning process. In my earliest memories, technology fascinated me. I began troubleshooting technology issues for my elementary teachers at a very young age and continue to do this today, not only for my teachers, but for nonprofits in my community, my family, and my peers. The thrill of a problem inspires a desire to learn more about every challenge presented, but more than that I have learned the joy of helping others and setting them up to succeed with technology. For me, it is not enough to solve someone’s problem, exercising patience and commitment to a person’s understanding is essential to allow them to succeed as the end user.
Technology touches every aspect of our daily lives. Every day new innovations change our avenues of communication, transportation, and how we conduct business. The impact of technology’s fast-paced advances challenges people to adapt and learn in an ever-changing culture. I aspire to lead others in learning and understanding technology to enhance their daily lives. Whether it’s setting up my grandmother’s iPad, implementing a new point of sale software for our family business, or coding a robot for competition, I am passionate about leading the project and those it impacts to excellence. When working on each project, I strive to listen first, provide solutions second, and ensure understanding after. For example, the website for my robotics team used to be built in raw HTML code, making the site difficult to update. Hearing the frustration of my teammates, I offered to build a new website with an easier user interface. Now our website content can be easily maintained from an app on their phones, and the site maintains a consistent layout and format. As someone who has since graduated from the team, it was important to create maintainable systems for the future team’s success.
Just as important as maintainable processes, success in my role as Controls Sub-Team Leader involved leading others alongside me and passing on my coding experience. This is an area that was weak when I joined the team, and I aspired to recruit young talent and strengthen our training and controls development to better prepare for the future of the team.
Leadership, however, is not simply getting the job done. My view of a successful leader is one who inspires his team to not only do the work, but have fun while doing it. Make some jokes. Laugh a little. Break up the monotony that can come from working a problem for too long at one time. A keen sense of humor and a heart for people inspires a leader’s following and determines his mark on a follower. I recognize there will be a definitive number of people I will lead in my lifetime, but, as stated by our 40th President:
“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone”
– Ronald Reagan