Student Leader of the Year
Makena Lambert, a current student in the INVST Class of 2020, was honored as Student Leader of the Year at CU Boulder. She attended a special dinner hosted by Chancellor Phillip DiStefano.
Together with five other students, she was then acknowledged at the Leo Hill Leadership Lecture by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. To mark Makena’s achievement, here are some of her reflections on collective leadership. She defines leadership this way:
On the surface, leadership is motivating a group of people to work together towards a common goal. However, if there is one lesson that I will take away from my time in INVST, it is that there is no simple definition of leadership. There are many different types of leaders amongst us. I have come to better understand leadership as not only the art of rallying people around a shared vision, but also supporting others in reaching their fullest potential as leaders themselves. This is exemplified by one of my personal heroes, Ella Baker. A crucial mentor to the most prominent student activists of the Civil Rights Movement, Ella Baker became known for her assertion that “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” While the success of the Civil Rights Movement is most often accredited to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s charismatic leadership, Ella Baker, who still remains largely unacknowledged by history textbooks, had a profound ability to inspire a deep sense of shared responsibility, and therefore, collective leadership amongst youth. This collective leadership model is superior to the top-down structure because when people grow something from the ground up, they become invested and develop a personal stake in it. This is how we can create sustainable movements that don’t fizzle out when there is a change in leadership.
I believe the best leaders are those who empower others -- those who see the importance of cultivating that sense of shared responsibility amongst a group of distinct individuals. We can see Ella Baker’s belief that “Strong people don’t need strong leaders” reflected in many of the social movements of our time. The Black Lives Matter Movement, for example, was founded on the notion that everyone within the movement should be capable of leading. However, because there is no singular, charismatic leader speaking on behalf of the entire movement, Black Lives Matter is often seen by outsiders as leaderless or fragmented. In class last semester, we were challenged to shift our perspectives and see it instead as a leader-full movement. Indeed, the Black Lives Matter Movement teaches us that leadership should not only be collaborative, but intentional in centering the voices of those who are too often silenced by top-down leadership structures that privilege certain people, while rendering others invisible.
These days, Makena is learning from the fearless leaders around her, like Jeanette Vizguerra, a prominent immigrant rights activist and the founder of Sanctuary for All who mentors Makena and supports a current SOL Project (Serving * Organizing * Leading) by INVST students. Jeanette constantly says she believes her responsibility is not to lead, but to empower others to become leaders themselves.
Makena, Jeanette and many other community leaders inspire us!