Hello! My name is Allena McKinley. I was raised in the small town of Hughesville, Pennsylvania. Growing up, I was taught the importance of hard work and responsibility. I graduated from Hughesville High School in 2018 as part of the National Honors Society. When I was in school, I was extremely involved in clubs and sports. I played soccer and ran track both of which I was captain of. I was also an officer of three of the four clubs I was in. Through my involvement I learned many valuable skills. For example, how to time manage, communicate, and lead. I realized through these experiences how much I loved to be hands on with events and programs and volunteering in my community. Throughout my high school career, I also became very interested in traveling. Since age 16 I traveled to several different places the top most popular, and my personal favorite, being Los Angeles, Nashville, and Toronto.
I no
ticed over the years how much I enjoyed exploring these destinations as every city had their own personality. I loved just walking the streets and touring the stores to oversee how each one was unique in their own way. Between my travels and my involvement in clubs I realized my interest in business. It was in that moment I knew I wanted to deepen my understanding of how the business world worked and what running a business consisted of. My high school didn’t provide many classes in the business field, so I was eager to continue my education at Penn State Altoona with a major in Marketing and Management and a minor in Entrepreneurship.
When I started my journey at Penn State Altoona as a freshman I knew I wanted to continue my involvement, so I decided to join THON, Orientation Leaders, and the Sheetz FellowsProgram. My two-year involvement with Orientation Leader has taught me the importance of teamwork as it is the reason behind most successful businesses and organizations today. It was the Sheetz Fellows Program that has helped me immensely with accumulating knowledge about the business world. This program allows me to network with the community and business leaders, participate in conferences, and be a part of real-world projects alongside learning about what it takes to be a great leader, how to communicate properly, teamwork, and the keys to success when it comes to running a great business. (Link for Sheetz Fellows??) I love being a part of this program because it allows me to continue volunteering in the community and learn many personal success stories and pieces of advice from local business professionals which I find very intriguing. I feel like this program pushes me to be the best student I can be as it forces me to keep a certain GPA and juggle community service, interviews, and community projects. It allows me to show my strong work ethic as I further develop my time management and organization skills.
I currently have a 3.88 GPA at Penn State Altoona and made the Dean’s List every semester so far. I am hoping to possibly shoot for another minor in my last two years here. I plan on graduating from Penn State in the spring of 2022. I hope to enhance my experience in business next fall through an internship and job shadowing as I am always looking to better my knowledge of the business field.
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