About Me: Caden Smith

My Name is Caden, and I’m a first-generation college student from Silverton Oregon, and I’m very eager to improve my skill set through an effective learning opportunity such as this. I grew up inspired by my mother's entrepreneurship and work ethic watching her work multiple jobs including running her own business along with side hustles to make ends meet as a young single mom with two kids. Aware of the opportunities she provided I made sure to apply myself to learning, and when she got a devastating cancer diagnosis, I used those skills gained to begin a freelancing web development service to offer to long-lasting businesses in our local area to get them connected to the internet and e-commerce at to help with the bills. This experience ignited my passion for software and learning new computer languages which led me to getting a full-time job at a startup with over 20 employees as a lead web developer for over a year. Growing my professional network, and getting a taste of working in the industry greatly motivated me to seek out an invaluable experience at Oregon State to further expand my network, and experiences with my diverse peers also attending Oregon State, and apply myself to remarkable opportunities. I enrolled in this course as part of my business minor, and I hope to garner valuable skills to become more well-rounded in my prospective career. I'm a Computer Science major with a minor in business and my applied subject for computer science is also business related. I'm most interested in this class on learning about how generating hype and exposure for an event or product changes depending on the target audience and the main factors behind that, so in the future, I'll know how to cater content and effort accordingly. I'm very passionate about playing/ watching basketball as I've been playing since I was 5 years old and hope to play basketball for the rest of my life.