On Friday, February 25th, City Year Boston was lucky enough to hear from Swanee Hunt, who served as US Ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997 and is well known as a visionary, political leader, academic, musician, philanthropist, photographer and author. Please read more in her biography. Learning from Leaders is part of City Year Boston’s Leadership Development training program, and on select Fridays throughout the year, the corps is treated to life stories, professional wisdom, and advice from successful and inspirational individuals.
Swanee laid out a few guidelines from her experience, and she passed this wisdom along to us:
- Seek out your unlikely allies – Ally yourself with people experiencing the same injustices that you want to remedy.
- Whistle as you move up – “Move Up”: You have to want to move up and fight for power positions. Power is not a dirty word – it’s ultimately how we make large-scale change happen. “Whistle”: It can be scary or intimidating to move up, but if you keep acting confident and happy (whistling), no one will know you are nervous, and you’ll even fool yourself!
- Life is not a jigsaw puzzle – Life probably won’t fit into a simple progression that is easy to plan for. Be okay with finding your path in unconventional ways.
- Enrich the lives of others - Always do what you can to to help out your fellow human being, helping others helps yourself.
- You are the traffic – We are all part of any situation that we are involved in. We are not separate from traffic that we are stuck in, instead, we add to the traffic, so we should think about how to move the entire group forward in the best direction and how we are contributing to what surrounds us.
- You are the artist creating the masterpiece that is you – We are the only ones in charge of our lives.
Here are some quotes from staff and corps members touched by the words of Swanee:
“…a lot of the corps members and staff who I talked to after the presentation really enjoyed her talk and left feeling inspired by what she shared with us. [We] would love to have her back anytime that we can!” – Alexandra DeGenova
“I really enjoyed Swanee Hunt speak to the Corps and was truly inspired by her!” – Jack Korpob
“I thought Swanee Hunt was amazing! I really enjoyed her talk – I have thought about it and talked about it all weekend!” – Jackie Levine
[photos: Elliot Haney 2011]
It has been awhile since I’ve heard of so much buzz from a guest speaker at our City Year Headquarters. And though I was sick/out that day, the fact that a speaker was able to close out Advance Training Academy week for our corps in such a dynamic, powerful way is a great feeling to know/hear. I hope Hunt is able to come back in the future for corps members to hear and learn from her. Definitely going to purchase her book to learn more about her.
It truly was probably my favorite ‘Learning From Leaders’ session that I have had the privilege of hearing in my two years here. Being able to be a part of the reception afterwards was incredible as well, and I urge anyone to stay in further contact with Swanee. She is truly inspirational and incredibly interesting!
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Swanee’s word’s were amazing and inspirational. I recently started her book, and it greatly resembles her personality that was present when she was speaking to the corps. I feel like I’m directly talking to her when I read the pages of her book.
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