Is business too overlooked by FIRST?

[Jessica Boucher]

As someone who has lived with this question for the past decade....yes. But it's better. (warning, this is long!)

I was a student in FRC in 99, graduated in 2001. I chose to go to Babson College (#1 in Entrepreneurship for 20 years by US News! Hell yeah!) and only applied to business programs. I also was accepted into UCONN (Storrs), Northeastern, and Bentley.

One of the main reasons for applying to Northeastern was to join 125. After being accepted I received a call from on a wednesday night claiming to be the "dean of the Business school", asking what could convince me to go to NU. I asked how close the Engineering building was. He couldn't tell me, and asked why I cared. I then spent the next 10 minutes explaining FIRST, and when I hung up the phone I knew I wasn't going there.

(Side note: I'm friends with the 125 leadership now and they know this story. We chalk it up to large university problems, and laugh about what might have been had I been there in that time period.)

Upon graduating HS, I had three years of dedication to the program, and zero chance of scholarship. None of the scholarships were for anything outside of STEM majors. I remember the comments and snide remarks I got when I shared I was going to business school, but I didn't care. I knew engineering wasn't right for me, but I could find a way that worked.

If being a business kid in FRC was alienating, being a FRC kid in business school was much of the same. I definitely had a different mindset, different knowledge base. I was the only girl in my sorority with a toolbox, which made me the most popular girl during move-in. I asked questions regarding tech that my professors couldn't answer. In business school, my fascination with the internet was "weird", whereas from a CS or engineering perspective it was "normal".

Fast forward to now. I do feel that I chose the right path, that it prepared me in ways that students who chose engineering will never have. It has made me stronger, more resilient. Even though people still assume I'm an engineer and sneer when I tell them I went to business school, I can tell them that I just "play an engineer on TV". Business school taught me how to deal with people, and how to answer that question correctly.

I kept with FIRST ever since that day in 99 (except for 2003, which I heard was ok to skip ). 15 seasons, 14 years of volunteering, and I love where I am now. Being Chief VC and starting up the NE District are great challenges that I am proud of, and I can't wait to do more in 2015. My husband is in FIRST, and I can't imagine our lives without it.

My day job is awesome too. I stuck with software after graduating college, and now I'm a Salesforce consultant for nonprofits. My FIRST experience helps me every single day with my current clients, and my tech background makes me smarter than the average business school grad. I have a MEd in Instructional Design as well, which I chose to pursue after my study of Learning Management Systems.

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So, back to the start. Is it overlooked? Yes. Is it better? Definitely yes! There's scholarship money that wasn't there before, not just for business, but for everyone. I know now FIRST needs to focus on STEM careers to stay relevant in their nonprofit market. I LOVE that we're expanding into other realms, as culture change means changing everyone, not just the tech companies.

We've come a long way. We have a long way to go.