Rockefeller Leadership Fellow: Regan Plekenpol ’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 an ideal platform for critical and creative thinking, idea sharing, relationship building, and self-reflection. It is an incubator for shared ideas and a means to collaborate with the strongest leaders at Dartmouth.  While I have been fortunate to find outlets to practice title-based leadership, I also look for subtle opportunities to serve as a role model—from welcoming incoming freshman on “H-Croo” to peer mentoring through my acapella group and programs targeting at-risk youth in the Upper Valley. I strive to be a leader on a personal level as a friend, big sister, wellness advocate, and humanitarian.

As a public policy minor, I relish opportunities engage with campus policy issues, which was part of my impetus for joining the executive board of Sigma Delta as social chair. Through this role, I am learning to understand various, often-opposing perspectives and synthesize them in order to schedule events that are palatable to all of the women I am elected to serve. I also work closely with other houses to emphasize responsibility and risk mitigation in the Greek community to ensure that we are always acting in a thoughtful, intentional, aware, and compassionate manner.

RLF is preparing me to approach leadership with confidence, a critical eye, and a spirit of teamwork and personal growth. After Dartmouth, my career plans will allow me to explore the intersection of business, technology, development, policy, and social entrepreneurship. Through RLF, I am learning how to motivate others, garner respect, instill my own vision as a common team goal, leverage strengths and weaknesses in a group setting, and approach leadership from a variety of angles.

Regan Plekenpol ’17 grew up in Edinburgh and Shanghai, graduating with an International Baccalaureate from Shanghai American School. At Dartmouth, Regan is a government major, public policy minor with a focus in global health policy. She sings with the Subtleties acapella group and is social chair of Sigma Delta. Regan has traveled to rural Nicaragua with a medical team through the Tucker Foundation and has been involved with the Dickey Center as a Great Issues Scholar and Global Health Initiative Scholar. She plans to tackle healthcare policy next fall at the Rockefeller’s Policy Research Shop. Regan is a peer mentor and a member of Hanover Croo. She has held internships on Capitol Hill, a Hong Kong law firm and a venture capital firm in Shenzhen. This summer she will be in New York at a boutique investment bank and plans to pursue the intersection of impact investing and social entrepreneurship.

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