Leadership is a characteristic I will never stop working at. I don't believe it'll ever be attainable; you can't be an efficient leader and believe you've reached a level where you no longer have to improve or work at it. It's an oxymoron for me. Leading means you're constantly working to find the best way to guide, achieve, and affect. Once you're complacent you lose the ability to lead. I jumped at the opportunity to be involved with women (specifically) leading because I don't think I see enough of it and I needed to do my part to fix that.
As a part of the FIU Women's Center Student Ambassador Leadership Team (SALT) I get to hone in on specific leadership skills to better myself while working within the FIU community to make our students aware of anything with global significance. SALT focuses on (1) communication skills: public speaking, development and facilitation, presentation, and representation (2) Interpersonal interaction: collaborations and working in dynamic strength teams and (3) Civic duty: bringing awareness to gender inequalities and promoting safe spaces for expression and enforcing solutions.
SALT has also given me the opportunity to work on event committees. I joined the Women Who Lead conference committee and worked on developing and fine-tuning the skills necessary to bring an idea to fruition. Everything from brainstorming concepts and names/titles to identifying desired speakers to reading out to them and vendors were things I had to do. Planning a schedule and creating activity ideas. I've done all these things in micro fashion and individually before, but this was my first time doing them all together and creating a conference. I loved it.