Graduate / Discuss two examples that demonstrate your potential as a successful leader? [4]

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I can present several examples to demonstrate my success as a leader. Two of such noteworthy experiences include my being the public relations director of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Golden Key Honor's Society chapter and my being the convener of the Student Action Committee at LUMS, back home in Lahore. However, in my view the best example that shows my potential as a successful leader appeared while I was working for ANAA (Asian American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights).

In 2006 I started working as a Regional Coordinator for ANAA in Lahore, Pakistan. ANAA provides a forum for the underprivileged and oppressed in Pakistan to voice their grievances and attempt to solve their problems with the help of local authorities. This one-year, full-time position was an intense experience as far as my personal development is concerned; and it taught me much about leading a team of people towards the fulfillment of common objectives.

This position required me to lead, coach, train and hold accountable ten volunteer students from three cities across Pakistan, who acted as coordinators for their local ANAA chapters. My task was to ensure that all of these volunteers, as members of ANAA, effectively ran and managed their local chapters.

As part of this position, I was responsible for coordinating, various projects that ANAA ran in Pakistan around issues of social relevance. One such project, which I initiated, aimed at creating awareness of HIV/AIDS in the Pakistani youth, by engaging other NGOs, corporate sponsors, high school students and youth interns from across Pakistan. I prepared a team of volunteers to run the project and guided the team in planning it in various phases, budgeting for its expenditures, and fund-raising. The campaign was a major success raising over twenty five thousand dollars for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Another example which shows my success as a leader was when I helped one of my colleagues at ANAA. My colleague had become extremely distressed after a project she had initiated failed to materialize due to bureaucratic hassles. This project was in cooperation with AIESEC India and AIESEC Pakistan to exchange students between the two countries over the summer break. This de-motivated her and it began to negatively affect her performance. My response was to help her put this incident behind her and assist her in revising her plan, goals and timeline for the remainder of the year. The result was quite encouraging: she forgot the past and we started preparing for similar kinds of cooperation with the help of a number of other Organizations to exchange students for internships in the coming months.

This leadership experience as a whole has been rewarding for me in a number of ways: It has made me realize the importance of empowering others, making them identify with the goals one is trying to achieve. It has also made me recognize and respect the different working styles of each individual I am leading and to customize my approach based on that.