GreenHouse helped me ask the right questions
While Shopify Plus is a relatively large company, it has a startup mindset that is familiar to Prianka from her experiences at St. Paul's GreenHouse and Velocity. One of the challenges for Prianka when she was a GreenHouse student studying Environment and Business was figuring out which of her many ideas to pursue.
"GreenHouse helped me ask the right questions, to listen to people and to see how a problem can be solved — skills I use every day in my career."
The skills she learned at GreenHouse were useful in other settings, including a group capstone project related to entrepreneurship.
"It was easy to simply do the research, but I always encouraged our group to step back, to think outside the box, and to examine fresh ideas. GreenHouse taught me not to be afraid to take that step back to think about the bigger picture."
Today, in sales, Prianka says, “We talk about how we are effectively running our own businesses — finding our own leads, talking to people, pitching ideas and bringing them on as customers.”
She adds, “People say that we are always selling something, even if it’s selling an idea to a friend. I think it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship: Even if you don’t plan to launch a startup yourself, learning entrepreneurial skills is very useful because they are transferable skills.”
While she has not ruled out the idea of running her own enterprise in the future, today, Prianka continues to enjoy friendships with people she met at GreenHouse and using and growing the skills she developed.