My experience:

I have experience with youth leadership development programming through a variety of professional, volunteer and personal experiences.

• In December 2007, I was selected as a Posse Scholar, earning a four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarship from the Posse Foundation. Posse identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential that may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes and places them in supportive, multicultural teams – Posses – of 10 students. Over the course of four years, Posse Scholars participate in an intensive leadership development experience and receive on-going leadership development support.

• In November 2011, I began volunteering as a Girl Scouts Troop Coordinator with the Hamdard Center for Health and Human Services, a multilingual, multicultural social and health service agency dedicated to serving the South Asian, Middle Eastern and Bosnian communities in Illinois. As a Girl Scout Troop Coordinator, I co-lead a diverse troop of girls ages 7-12. I facilitate a weekly hour-long workshops focusing on community engagement, leadership development and confidence building. I also plan and implement field trips, service activities, cultural exchanges, and fundraising.

• In December 2011, I began assisting with the Cultural Kitchen program at Hostelling International Chicago. Cultural Kitchen is an experiential learning program that connects Chicago-are students to the world through an engaging week-long curriculum that teaches cultural understanding, global citizenship, teamwork, and research and presentation skills. As a Cultural Kitchen Program Assistant, I facilitate monthly dinners where students present on the countries they researched, prepare a meal from that country, and engage in activities with fellow students and travelers.

Through this experience I learned the following lessons and discovered my passion for assisting youth people develop their leadership skills and understand the unique contributions they can make to improving their communities.

My interests:

• Creating opportunities for young people to become leaders and contributors to their communities
• Helping students learn to make a meaningful and sustainable change in their lives
• Utilizing unique leadership development methods to engender lasting, positive change in the lives of students and staff alike
• Mentoring students to tap their deepest strengths and passions
• Developing a culture of leadership
• Developing leaders who learn and listen to others, take bold action, take personal responsibility, set ambitious goals and make courageous decisions
• Developing leaders who are empathetic, able to emotionally put yourself in the place of others – an essential skills for those hoping to create change within themselves and their communities and empowers them to collaborate effectively in order to maximize their impact