Why I Choose to Pursue Industrial/organizational (i/o) Psychology

Throughout my years, I have adapted a very cosmopolitan outlook. My greatest strengths include my open mind, receptiveness, and curiosity about all other cultures; I am someone who relishes multicultural experiences and diversity. Being born in Congo, Kinshasa (Africa), spending most of my pre-teenage years in Liège, Belgium (Europe) and now going on my tenth year in the United States has provided me with a strong multicultural outlook and essentially a keen ability to comprehend different perspectives. As a young black man, I am extremely interested in the conversation and progress of social justice and human rights, yet I am a person who is guided more by practical considerations than by ideals. I want to use my pragmatist mindset in order to support economic development and the growth of industry and trade. I have made my decision to pursue Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology because it is not only one of the fastest growing areas for the application of professional life but also because of its heightened focus on workplace productivity and employee’s mental health. I am convinced that Adler University goes above and beyond my expectations to provide an excellent aspect of education best tailored to my interests and long term aspirations.

I am fully confident that Adler University’s I/O Psychology Program will provide me with a variety of tools in order to solve organizational problems and learn how to constantly grow professionally in today’s global and multicultural work environment. My long-term goal is to someday become a freelance, industrial psychologist, working for different organizations around the world. As a person of color, I am extremely focused on minority concerns and gender issues in the workplace and I want to be able to make a significant positive impact on those social issues through my education. I look forward to perfecting my communication skills to establish training programs that will help workers and supervisors develop heightened understandings of and respect for each other. At the same time that I provide the right long term tools for companies to become more profitable, I want to also help them develop more real interpersonal connections, with more satisfied and more loyal employees. I want to assist every business that I will work alongside with the creation of more healthy work environments that ultimately contribute to productivity. The completion of my dreams and professional vision would consist of someday hiring other I/O psychology freelancers such as myself to attend to my client base. I am convinced that Adler University’s I/O Psychology Program will be my wisest move, so as to attain the right tools for reaching the professional level that I want to achieve in my area of expertise and gaining professional experience in certain critical areas. My long term, passionate interest in problem solving as well as research methods have well been complemented by my B.A. double major degree in Business Administration and Psychology. I am now enormously excited about graduate school; I have a refined passion for so many aspects of psychology, in particular, job satisfaction assessment, group psychology, theories of group psychology, and executive training. I look forward to doing research in the areas of performance evaluation and work motivation. I am particularly interested on the areas of career development and workplace diversity, especially with respect to the corporate industry.

I feel very strongly that I possess the skill sets that are most important for success in graduate school: purposefulness, global consciousness, and a profound ambition to make a significant contribution to the psychology community. At the age of 21, I am already accustomed to working extremely hard towards my goals, having had multiple employment and internship opportunities focused on and around the practice/concepts of I/O Psychology. Whether that was my 3-month internship as a Human Resources intern, as an Account Associate in charge of day-to-day customer interaction, or currently as a Business Strategy Research intern in Amsterdam, I am grateful that my love for people will now move to a higher plane of service, laboring to enhance the humanity and dignity of the corporate environment. The greatest contribution that I might be able to make to society would be to enhance techniques in which employees feel that they can best support themselves along with their families in a pleasant and healthy work environment that is assisted by the company and its human resources staff. I am convinced that it is we the psychologists that ultimately help achieve the goals of a prosperous and successful society. I want to thank you for your consideration of my application.