Yena Kwon, ’25, used to think there was one type of leader.
“My perception of a leader was someone who always had the loudest voice, who was charismatic, stood in front of the room,” she says. “But I quickly realized that isn’t really who I am.”
While getting her bachelor’s of business administration at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Kwon continued to see this monolithic idea of a leader. But when she found the Barger Leadership Institute, she was able to explore and shape her own leadership style, with the support of peer, staff, and faculty mentors.
“A big question for me, stepping into the University my first semester, was ‘How do I be a leader while still embracing my soft-sided, introverted self?’” Kwon remembers. “Getting that mentorship and support from a manager who I can trust and look up to really helped me develop my own leadership style.”
Kwon spent four years honing her leadership identity in U-M’s Barger Leadership Institute, where undergraduate students are engaging in immersive and interdisciplinary leadership experiences. The institute believes “leadership is a set of learnable characteristics, habits, and actions designed to connect and foster meaningful change.” Using techniques developed over more than a decade of mindfulness research by director Ramaswami Mahalingam, students like Kwon find support as they explore what it means to be “a leader they would want to follow.”
“Students think leaders are born — that’s a misconception,” Mahalingam says. “Leaders grow and they learn. It’s a process. That’s the first thing I work with students to really understand.”
Read the complete article at UM Alumni Association
