JeremyLeizmanHawkenProjects2021

As my Hawken Project comes to an end, I am very proud of how my final project turned out.  Looking back to the beginning of the project, my goals, and inspirations for this project were to find and reach out to successful individuals across different fields I had interests in and hear about their experiences and any wisdom or advice they may be able to offer. In addition to this goal, I decided to center it around hiking and exploration of Cleveland as I felt that up until this point I was contained within a small area with very few experiences outside of it. Overall I would say my project went extremely well and I met almost all of my goals getting to speak with a range of individuals from a software engineer at Facebook all the way to a local small business owner. In addition to this, I felt that I succeeded with my second goal of learning more about the area around me, going for hikes in areas as far out as Twinsburg while also learning more about the industrial district and dow...

For my last hike, I went with a group of kids called shin shin, essentially high school graduates on a gap year in America before they are required to join the Israeli armed forces. As I am Jewish, this hike was very interesting and I learned a lot about not only Israel but also my culture and background. During this walk, a very important topic we discussed was the Israel-Palestine conflict. It was very impactful to hear from firsthand sources how the conflict affects the people and seeing how the American media sources are able to manipulate us to take sides on a complex issue going back thousands of years with no cut and dry answer or solution. One thing which really surprised me from this experience was how different Israeli culture is when compared to American culture. For example, one of the shin shin named Ori lived on a kibbutz which was described as a community based around the production of food, often with socialist or communist values, in Ori's case, they were a more fr...

 For my fifth hike, I went with some friends on a less traditional hike. I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland and had not got to experience Cleveland and all it has, both the good and the bad. Many of my friends were the same way, and we decided it would be really valuable to get out of our bubble a little and see Cleveland for what it really is, and the conditions which some people have to live in. We walked through some downtown and industrial parts of Cleveland that I had not seen much before. This was extremely impactful for me as it gave me a window into the effect of under-investment by the government in low-income areas. On our hikes, we saw several abandoned buildings, which were an extreme eyesore and looked as if they had not been tended to in many years. We learned that a lot of these abandoned buildings had health hazards to the community and surrounding area, ranging from becoming illegal trash dumping sites where thousands upon thousands of pounds of waste was dumped...

  For my fourth hike, I walked with Craig Schwartz, an attorney from the Solon area. Law is one of my many interests and as such, it was very valuable to hear the experiences and paths taken to get him to where he is today. I learned first about Mr. Schwartz's education, starting at Ohio State University as a communication major with an interest in political science. As law is one of my many interests, hearing the journey of Mr. Schwartz was extremely valuable and taught me a lot about what I will have to look for and pursue in college and future studies to get to where I want to. Some important advice given to me was to make sure I find student groups at college that fall in with my interests and take a variety of liberal arts courses around many different disciplines to figure out what I want to pursue in the work field. In addition to this, I learned about Mr. Schwart's experiences in law school, which he said was a lot more serious than a college education with much less t...

 For my third hike, I walked with Peter Mitchell, one of the co-owners of Mitchells Ice Cream. I really enjoyed this hike and found it super valuable as it taught me a lot of the ins and outs of running a successful business. Some of the main takeaways from this hike were the importance of consistency in producing a product or service, within industry standards, products produced on different dates and times, as well as physical stores, or locations. This is why the stores all have similar features like trains or similar menu boards, or even counters. Consistency with industry standards also means that the price that is paid for a scoop all the way to a quart of ice cream at Mitchell's will be very similar if not identical to the price for a competitor whether it be Graters, Jeni's, or Dairy Queen. Another lesson learned was the importance of not only providing a good experience for the customer but a good experience for the employee. The impact of providing a good experience f...