Leadership Roles
GCE Co-Director
Global Community Engagement (GCE) is a non-profit, non-governmental service-learning organization and a great experience where FIU students fundraise for two semesters and travel to the Dominican Republic to educate underprivileged kids. We fundraised at the hard rock stadium every other weekend and sold pizza. We also did other activities, such as tabling at the Graham Center and GoFundMe on social media. It is called a service-learning experience because we are not only volunteering to help kids improve their way of life but most importantly, we learn and grow from this experience. Woman in STEM.
After fundraising, we would go to the Dominican Republic and teach educational topics to kids who work on the street, don’t have families, and are very vulnerable. We would also encourage university students from the D.R to advocate for these kids and their future by donating and educating them as we did.
Alternative Breaks Site Leader (aB)
I was a site leader at Alternative Breaks representing an FIU organization named Global community engagement. I would go to weekly meetings with other site leaders of other organizations. During those meetings, we would discuss global issues and do different teamwork activities. We would also discuss the SDGs and act as if we were representing other countries.
We would find solutions to those countries’ main issues by explaining the sustainable development goals. We also did beach clean-up and presentations, and we had to take a class of alternative breaks simultaneously on canvas and participate in discussions about the importance of global engagement.
Lastly, as a site leader, I had the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic with FIU students in an organization named GCE. We brought education lesson plans to public schools in D.R for an entire week to represent aB.
At the end of the trip, we did a reflection where all GCE members participated and spoke about the most impactful part of making this trip to the Dominican Republic and educating underprivileged kids. Alternative Breaks also provided t-shirts for the travel and food for our group retreat.
Academy of Leaders (AOL) Team Lead
Throughout fall 2022 and spring 2023, I joined the Academy of leaders at FIU as a team lead and went to both retreats. I learned about student leadership competencies and present every Thursday. Some leadership competencies include modeling the way, Inspiring Shared Vision, Challenging the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encouraging the heart. Model the way means that as a leader, one must guide other people by being a role model or giving an example. Inspiring a shared vision means that if you have a dream, you can motivate other people to follow that passion that you already have and create great things together. Challenging the process means that when rules are set, you can always think outside the box and provide new ideas—enabling others to act means that you encourage other people to be leaders and achieve their goals. Encouraging the heart means motivating your team with words of affirmation and reminding them of the outstanding results they’ve accomplished. For example, during this experience as the Academy Of Leaders (AOL) team lead, I talked publicly on our retreat with the AOL participants. I explained the importance of enabling others to act. This has been a great experience that I was able to participate in my last semester, and I kept on improving my leadership skills.
ASCE New Town Road Captain:
Responsible for leading a group of 6 students and representing FIU in a national engineering competition.
Researched with team members on engineering topics, and exceptionally resilient transportation systems.
Please refer to: ASCE