Rockefeller Leadership Fellow: Devyn Greenberg ’17

This series introduces the 2016-2017 Rockefeller Leadership Fellows. Each fellow reflects on why he or she wanted to be a part of the program and what aspects of leadership most interests them.

RLF is the pinnacle of the reflection, collaboration, and growth that has characterized my desire to enact “transformational leadership” in both my personal and professional life. I have been heavily involved at the Rockefeller Center because I believe in the importance of reflection and collaborative learning.

In high school. I learned that leadership is inextricably linked to one’s own identity and the identity of those with whom one collaborates. Since then, I have reflected extensively on how our backgrounds and experiences impact communication with peers and supervisors. I have come to understand that I highly value compassion, integrity, adaptability, and communicativeness in a leader. I want to explore the attributes of strong leaders in depth because through my career, I hope to leverage my strengths, resources, and education towards the public good in a potential career in public service.

My experience working with Dartmouth’s America Reads program has taught me a great deal about leadership. The program sends 50 Dartmouth students weekly to local elementary schools in four-person shifts, in order to tutor second to fifth grade students. I have been a tutor since my freshman fall, a Program Chair since my sophomore fall, and this year I am serving as the Student Director. Being Student Director is a manifestation of my long-term vision and is one of my proudest accomplishments at Dartmouth. I am particularly proud of this accomplishment because in order to reach this point, I have had to repeatedly confront a personal leadership challenge, which is an extreme fear of public speaking. Ruled by fear, I even limited my own growth in high school by selecting “behind-the-scenes” leadership roles and staying firmly within my comfort zone. However, by taking more and more ‘risks’ through my involvement with America Reads, I have broken this cycle at Dartmouth.

Through RLF, I’m joining a network of leaders from all corners of campus and hope to be pushed to critically reflect on who I am, who I want to be, and how I will get there.

Devyn Greenberg is a ’17 from New York City who is majoring in Government and Middle Eastern Studies. She studied abroad on the Fez, Morocco FSP last spring, and completed the Rockefeller Center’s Oxford Exchange this past winter. In the fall, with funding from the Rockefeller Internship Program, she worked at the Executive Office of the President, and loved her experience in the Federal government. Since arriving at Dartmouth she has engaged in a variety of Rockefeller Center co-curricular programs and opportunities, working as a First Year Fellow at DC Prep, participating in D.L.A.B. and MLDP, and now working as a PoliTalk Student Program Assistant. She also assists Professor Vandewalle’s research in the government department, is the incoming Student Director of America Reads, and serves as a Senior Editor for World Outlook Journal of International Affairs.

Edited by Rachel Favors '18, Rockefeller Center Student Program Assistant for Communications