Tell us about your most meaningful collaborative leadership experience and what role you played. What did you learn about your own individual strengths and weaknesses through this experience?

One of my greatest experiences at Emory was adding a fourth journal to the law school. During my first year, a group of four women, myself included, devised a plan to create a new journal, as the other journals’ topical coverage was narrowly focused. We conducted research, drafted multiple proposals, and persuaded the deans and faculty to approve and fund the journal for the first year. After over a year of hard work, the Emory Journal of Law and Policy was born and the real work began.

I became the business editor as a second-year law student, something unheard of in most journals across the nation. As the leader of my team, we created a financial plan to ensure that the journal would be a self-sustaining business after that year. During my third-year of law school, I became the journal’s symposium editor and was in charge of a new team. Together we planned and organized the journal’s first two symposiums and first colloquium, recruited high profile speakers, set up sponsorships and managed all details of the events. Ultimately this culminated in the symposium team’s greatest achievement: securing Justice Sonia Sotomayor to speak at the journal’s second symposium in 2013.

Through this experience, I learned that there was no limit to what I could accomplish. Successfully recruiting Justice Sotomayor taught me that I can achieve whatever I set my mind to, even if it doesn’t immediately seem possible. I also learned that I had the power to become a persuasive leader and advocate. Convincing experts to speak at our event wasn’t the easiest task, but I used my skills to explain that it would be both beneficial for them, as well as increase the knowledge of our law school community. Lastly I learned that my ability to develop creative ways to approach problems was a key strength as well. There was not always a straight path to the solution, but we found that using our faculty network and journal board of director’s was a great way to secure speakers for our events.

While I believe this experience highlighted many of my strengths, it also helped me uncover some weaknesses. Growing up with siblings that were significantly older than me, I was used to doing things on my own. In my journal work I found it hard to give up control of certain aspects for fear that it might not be done correctly. However, through the successes of my journal teams, I learned to trust others and that effective team and delegation skills are necessary for success. Additionally, I found I could be overly analytical. My desire to find the “logical” approach would sometimes cause me to ignore the emotional and human aspects of decision-making. Through the years, and my professional experiences, I’ve learned the importance of connecting with people on a deeper level, and that logic is not always the best way to achieve comfort level. Going forward I’ll continue to work on improving my weaknesses, becoming an even stronger leader in the process.