Emerging Leaders Are Answering Call
By Andrew Waite
D'Andre Holland, a second year occupational therapy student at the University of Southern California, had a friend who kept forwarding her the same e-mail.
"I'll be honest," Holland recalls about the announcement of AOTA's 2012 Emerging Leaders Development Program (ELDP). "I saw emerging leaders, and, okay, I archived it a couple of times."
But Holland finally read the message and applied to the program, answering AOTA's annual call. It is a call that seeks 15 to 20 young practitioners and/or students to travel to Bethesda for an intensive 2-day leadership training course to ensure continued development of strong leaders within the profession as the Association carries out the goals of the Centennial Vision.
Although the program sounds exclusive––and make no mistake, each participant deserves his or her seat at the table––it is also is a way to show potential leaders that stepping up doesn't have to be so hard, even if their initial reaction is to set aside the request. The program was born out of a Representative Assembly ad hoc committee devoted to "Association leadership." One of their key recommendations was the formation of the ELDP to identify and engage our next generation of leaders after current leaders realized many committees were filled with 50 somethings, says AOTA Vice President Virginia Stoffel, PhD, OT, BCMH, FAOTA, who has co-presented at the Emerging Leaders training since its inception.
On January 12 and 13, 17 future leaders attended AOTA's 3rd annual program and discussed issues like: What core values make an effective leader? How does an effective leader listen? And how do AOTA and its leadership opportunities evolve?
Participants are selected following an application process that asks them to write an essay explaining their interest in the program and articulating their future leadership goals; they must also provide a reference who can speak to their current leadership capabilities and future leadership potential. AOTA selects candidates who have 5 years or fewer of professional experience who have shown an initial dedication to the profession and service at the start of their career.
Stoffel and Nancy Stanford-Blair, PhD, developed the program's curriculum. Stoffel says even though the content of the lessons remains largely unchanged from year to year, the participants make every new session valuable and unique.
"What we have is a lot of active learning that happens, so reflective questions and where you go with them change based on the experience of the group," Stoffel says. "So while there are certain things we've done each of the 3 years, we have always learned from the past, but it gets changed by the participation."
This year's diverse group included students, OTs and an OTA, men and women, practitioners in their second career, practitioners working toward their doctoral degrees, practitioners interested in academia, practitioners balancing careers and families, and even a state association president.
Carrie Beals, MS, OTR/L, president of the Maine Occupational Therapy Association, is focused on health care reform and how it will affect her state. She applied to the ELDP to learn how to increase her skills in encouraging others to become more active professionals.
"I hope it will be helpful to me as I try to engage more people to be involved at the state level and to be involved with AOTA," Beals says. "There are opportunities to be involved as a leader and those things are really manageable, and they can be achievable even when you are working full time and have everything else going on in your life."
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| Photo above, from Left to Right – Lindsay Ferguson, Elizabeth Hylton, Emily Vaught, and Mallory Duncan listen to leadership training. |
Elizabeth Hylton, MOT, OTR/L, an occupational therapist at a children's center in Oklahoma, who also serves as the membership chair of her state association, says she was inspired by her fellow emerging leaders.
"It's been really nice to be surrounded with other OTs who are motivated and really working toward the same goal. At home you're surrounded by a sort of apathy, so you're trying to make a difference and it feels like you are not getting anywhere. So seeing all these other people you feel like there is support and movement toward the Centennial Vision," Hylton says.
Following the training, each Emerging Leader was paired with a mentor who currently holds a leadership position within AOTA. The period of formal mentorship will continue for at least 1 year after the training. Although candidates will develop leadership skills that could translate into their own practice, the goal of Emerging Leaders is to provide leadership training through Association activities, not clinical growth mentoring.
Jennifer Kluever, MS, OTR/L, said she was excited about a different level of mentorship. She was paired with Theresa May-Benson, ScD, OTR/L, AOTA's Sensory Integration Special Interest Section chairperson.
"The professors at my school were awesome, but no one specialized in sensory integration. Because [Benson] specializes in sensory integration and because she's so active and she's constantly writing research articles, she will be very inspirational to me and hopefully offer some different opportunities and perspective," says Kluever.
Halfway through the 2-day training, Holland was glad she'd decided to open that e-mail. She was learning what makes her a leader and thinking of ways she could utilize those skills during her career.
"OTs always say we make a difference one person at time. I am very much interested in how we can make a difference to whole communities, and I think AOTA is a great platform to help us make that difference," Holland says, encouraging other occupational therapy practitioners take advantages of programs like ELDP. "We all have the chance to make a difference if we want to take it."
The 2012 Emerging Leaders are Mallory Duncan, Arameh Anvarizadeh, Paul Arthur, Caroline Beals, Cresencia Burhans, Lindsay Ferguson, Benjamin Gross, D'Andre Holland, Catherine Hoyt, Elizabeth Hylton, Jennifer Kluever, Emily Kringle, Kimberly Lorenz, Cristina Smith, Emily Vaught, Mollie Verdier, and Leslie Wiggins.
For more information, visit the Emerging Leader page here.
Andrew Waite is the associate editor of OT Practice. He can be reached at awaite@aota.org.
