Leadership and purpose became synonymous with instigating revolutions - NSF memberhip

Chevening Leadership Question

Please read my answer to the Leadership Question in Chevening app. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Holt, I especially look forward to your feedback. Thanks.

My father is a Communist, who nurtured a strong drive for initiative in my personality. Growing up politically exposed to the ideas of socialism and communism, I went to university to study International Relations. Leadership and purpose became synonymous with instigating revolutions and I became a full-time member of a left-wing students' political organization, the National Students Federation (NSF).

Participating in the NSF was educative, leading me to recognize that I was a Communist because the fair organization of politics and society mattered to me, and I had not known other ways-for instance, democratization and equitable social development-to achieve it. It took a lot of genuine introspection to accept that working for social development was more of my thing than propelling revolutions. After all, I was an individual who ran a small home-based tuition centre for her maid's children, wanting them to experience learning also. I was someone who conducted free-of-cost exam preparation classes in university for class fellows working to support their families. In my free time, I would be mostly designing easy-to-comprehend curricula for out-of-school children who had never read an alphabet, or writing against illegal hike in school fees. My idea of social development was rooted in education. Illiteracy was a problem and I wanted to do something about it.

This realization gave a fairly concrete shape to my engagement in educational initiatives. I joined The Citizens Foundation, a non-profit educational organization, and have been associated with their Alumni Development Programme (ADP) for two years now, helping under-privileged students to prepare their applications for international universities and undergraduate exchanges. This year, I helped ten students with their application essays for the USEFP U-Grad Exchange Program, two of whom got selected. Furthermore, I contribute a portion of my monthly salary towards the Teacher's Fund for a government girls' school in Mehrabpur, Sindh. I am also part of Facebook groups that mobilize financial assistance for poor families and single or widowed women. Recently, with the help of a friend, I raised money for a child's surgery.

The choice to work at Oxford University Press (OUP) also reflects my belief in 'development through literacy'. Working at OUP gives me a strong sense of purpose, as I actively develop books, and voice my concerns if the content is regressive. Within the organization, I am a vocal proponent for low-priced, high-quality textbooks, designed in ways that they shed gender and racial stereotypes. I work with academics to develop student-friendly, factually accurate, and low-priced resources to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge. Presently, I am working to develop core textbooks on International Relations and Gender Studies for Pakistani university students.

The belief in 'development through literacy' has made me take these initiatives. My intellectual drive combined with a capacity to take action has made me an influencer in my social and family circle. I want to continue my activities on a broader, more popular base, and perceive an engagement with the Chevening community as pivotal to this end.

Marzia, what you wrote is not a leadership and influencing essay, it is a personal statement. The content of the essay, though enlightening and provocative, does not meet the Chevening requirements for a leadership and influencing essay. From your background, it is quite possible that you have a side of you that wants to be an activist. Am I right? However, you cannot be an open activist in your situation. That is why you use your work to influence people's thoughts. So focus on your work at Oxford University Press. It shows a pretty good foundation for your influencing skills, but doesn't really deliver much in terms of your leadership skills. Is there any way that you can use this professional foundation to further illustrate your leadership skills? You can use your belief in "development through literacy" as your leadership basis. The only question is, how do you tie it into your professional experience? When were you ever called upon to lead a project or team at OUP? If you can develop the leadership and influencing examples in the context of your job as an editor (?) then maybe, just maybe, we can get it to work for this prompt. You should only use bits and pieces of the fact that you were raised in a communist regime and have a communist father in this essay. Work it into the development of your leadership and influencing skills as the basis for your personal ideologies about leadership and influencing or for the fact that you lead and influence people in a far different manner from that which is familiar to you. You need to revise this essay first, submit some good comments on other people's threads here, and then hopefully, I can offer another review of your revised essay.

In my opinion, you should focus more on what this program enhance your employment opportunities in your country of residence/citizenship. So you can use knowledge and information that you will study to develop your country.

Merged:

Practising, Perfecting -- Revised Chevening Leadership Essay

My introduction to the prestige and pitfalls of higher education publishing in Pakistan happened through Oxford University Press (OUP), where I work as Higher Education Editor.

I joined OUP in April 2016, soon realizing that my work entailed more than just editing and proofing manuscripts. I was a Project Manager too. Handling book projects from inception to publication, to ensuring that they reached the market and sold well, I was responsible for much more. In May 2016, I was called for a meeting with my Manager and Director, and asked to join and revive the Higher Education Unit (HEU) of the Press.

The HEU was previously run by one person. The workload was such that it ultimately became too much for him to handle, so the first step was making the Management realize the need for a 'team'. I researched extensively about HEUs of leading academic publishers and proposed new positions of HEU Manager, Commissioning Editors, and Desk Editors. I created a model departmental organogram with these positions and proposed matrix reporting lines. This organogram was developed in active consultation with my Manager and HR. To build the team, I persuaded people from my university to interview at OUP, and incessantly followed up with my Manager regarding hiring requests. Since I had to work alone until someone joined, I got my JD broadened to include project commissioning, while working as a desk editor, and simultaneously fulfilling the responsibilities of HEU Manager.

For five difficult months, I worked alone, utilizing this time for developing SOPs and clearing the backlog. I placated angry authors, who refused to meet when I would tell them that I was calling from OUP's HEU. I would mostly find myself saying, 'I'm sorry you're disappointed. I'm sure there is a way forward and we can rebuild the relationship by exploring options at our disposal.' My patience and reassurance made these authors agreeable and commissioning meetings started to materialize.

I created textbook proposal guidelines, chalked out a publishing plan for 2017, and ventured in the market to explore opportunities for higher education publishing. During this time, I regularly met academics at universities in Karachi and persuaded them to write new textbooks for us.

With some months of rigorous work and networking, I commissioned a textbook project to two Pakistani academics. This book, launching in 2018, will cover International Relations for undergrad students from local perspectives. I have also commissioned a Gender Studies textbook project to a Pakistani academic. The idea to study both IR and Gender Studies from local perspectives and examples makes me proud of the work I do. I also solicited four new manuscripts, and got three running titles revised for new editions.

In my 17-months association with OUP's HEU, three desk editors, in addition to the Manager, have been hired, and seven books published. Now, I am finally going to be in a position where I always wanted to be i.e. Commissioning Editor, better prepared to explore the challenges and opportunities of a new portfolio.

Raza, IMO, in your writing, mostly I only hit by your own hardworking efforts.
I didn't gain the influencing and leadership features of yours, except in your communication with the authors.