Sawhney Leadership Fellows

By: Averial Evans

The Sawhney Leadership Program is known to create opportunities and expand leadership development among the students in the program. This year’s participants, also known as fellows, believe their experience has strongly influenced the growth of their leadership styles for their respective career paths.

“It has taught me a lot of great leadership skills and has further prepared me for my path to being a lawyer, including in the aspects of public speaking,” said Chizahra Murphy, a political science and law in society double major.

Murphy also accredits the program to benefiting her academic and social college experience.

“I am now surrounded by like minded multicultural individuals and I am able to relate to them and bond with them,” Murphy said.

Others, like Anesu Mhene, a senior legal studies major, find the skills she learned can apply more broadly in other aspects of her life, not just in her leadership roles on campus.

“After learning about emotional intelligence and its importance, I have found myself to be more understanding towards my peers and coworkers, which has helped me create more positive relationships,” Mhene said.

Cecil Huang, a graduate student in the occupational therapy program, believes the program has helped build her confidence personally and professionally in advocating for others in her career field.

“It made me, helped me, build up my confidence and what I can do one day,” Huang said. “So for me, you know, to like working in a hospital kind of just learning how to advocate for others, advocate for other patients and clients.”

Khushi Dagli, a junior health sciences major in the entry-level master physician assistant program, believes the leadership program has allowed him to work through and overcome certain feelings of not belonging in academic spaces.

“I think academically it has made me realize more about the imposter syndrome and accepting and escaping it now. It was eye-opening to see the other group members also go through it and work through it in a way that is truthful but also remain competent,” Dagli said.

Through his experiences within the program and seeing his peers go through their own trials, Dagli has been able find and picture himself as a leader.

“It has made me realize that I am a leader which is hard to recognize,” Dagli added. “You do things and learn things in roles you pursue but it’s hard to picture yourself as a leader and that is what the program has helped me with.”