Margaret Parks ’24

“What drives my passion is the love for understanding the world around me, helping others and collaborating with people with varying lived experience to create and design for a more inclusive world,” says Margaret, a junior who is headed to Boeing this summer for a paid internship with the leading global aerospace company.

Drawn to art and STEM, her Smith trajectory has been wide, speedy and creative. An engineering major, she’s minoring in arts and technology (a combined program), and also pursuing a concentration in collaborative innovation. All while being actively involved with the Design Thinking Initiative, the Wurtele Center for Leadership and the Jill Ker Conway Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, as well as serving as editor-in-chief of The Madeleine (Smith’s yearbook).

The Boeing internship will be her third. Previously she interned at the Social Entrepreneurship Corps, a program that supports grassroots development in rural Guatemala, where she learned “how important human-centered design is.” Her second internship was with the engineering consultancy JB&B.

“With every meeting I get better at explaining my goals and what I am passionate about to people in industries I am interested in.”

Because of her broad academic interests, Margaret has plenty of faculty advisors. “They are all great role models in their respective fields, and also change-makers who are willing to go on this path of exploration with me,” Margaret says.

Lazarus Center staff have supported her every step of the way, helping her network and prep for internship interviews. “With every meeting I get better at explaining my goals and what I am passionate about to people in industries I am interested in,” Margaret says. “Becoming comfortable with reaching out and talking to people gets better by doing it more. It’s as simple as that.”

During her senior year, Margaret plans to “explore as many maker spaces on campus as possible to gain as much knowledge about various forms of design as possible.” Her goal is to combine art and science to “form something beautifully unique.” She will leverage her vast experiences from campus—in theater lighting, video production, the Center for Design and Fabrication and the Design Thinking Initiative—as well as from her internships. She will also serve as the teaching assistant in a new introductory course focused on interdisciplinary making, for a curriculum she helped develop, and participate in Design Clinic, a trademark applied-design class for seniors in the Picker Engineering Program that solves real problems for real clients.