Week Five:

What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual and/or from your adopted community and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future? Add in photos and videos as you like!

This summer has really sharpened my teaching and mentorship skills. It's my first time doing a long-term mentorship with a robotics team, and I've had to figure out how to structure lessons, explain things in different ways, and learned how to keep a team self motivated over weeks. 

Teaching has also strengthened my own foundation. Attempting to teach the students pushed me to revisit some of the fundamentals of mechanical engineering and design. 

The person who has been most instrumental in my project is Keeghan Patrick, the leader of the local organization I work with. Keeghan is one of the people shaping the growing tech scene in St. Lucia. What inspires me most is that he could be earning much more if he stayed in the US, but he chose to come back and invest in the community he grew up in. This is something that Keeghan and I often talk about, and is something that his team as a whole believes in strongly as well.

From Keeghan I learned a lot about what it takes to lead and inspire a small team. He leads by working alongside people (“leading from the side” as per the Laidlaw leadership training). He keeps a long-term vision but also is able to get into the details of the work with specific team members.

It's a style of leadership I want to carry into my own work, whether that's in research or future community projects!

Here are some photos of the team!!