Authentic Leader of the Month

The Willis L. Jones Leadership Center bases its programs and philosophy around the idea of authentic leadership. The Authentic Leader of the Month (ALM) celebrates and rewards student leaders on campus who use an inclusive, relational approach to guide others towards achieving a shared vision.

Students whose nomination is selected as the ALM will be featured on our social media accounts, and receive a digital certificate. The ALM will be formally recognized by the JLC. They will also receive a gift card to either Starbucks or Grubhub.

In May, an Authentic Leader of the Year will be selected from the pool of previous winners and will receive a FREE Terrace chair.

Apply or nominate a leader today!

January 2020 Authentic Leader of the Month

Saja-Bilasan Abu Hakmeh, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position or Opportunity: I have enjoyed my work with PAVE as the Chair. Learning about and educating students on sexual and gender-based violence issues on campus has been an enriching experience that has influenced my future career aspirations in the field of mental health.

Favorite Leadership Quote:

“We can not fight for our rights and our history as well as future until we are armed with weapons of criticism and dedicated consciousness.”
― Edward W. Said

January 2020 Authentic Leader of the Month

November 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

Carol Ta, Junior

Leadership Invlolvement:

- APIAVote Liaison for aKDPhi
- Collective Philanthropy Director for UVSA-Midwest
- Asian Awareness Chair for aKDPhi

Favorite Leadership Opportunity: One of my favorites has to be being APIAVote Liaison for the aKDPhi sorority. I got to travel to Washington D.C., meet amazing people, and learn how to increase civic engagement on our campus - especially within the APIDA community.

November 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

October 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

Maddie Petre, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Director of Camp Kesem at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Leadership Quote: "I have gotten the opportunity to meet hundreds of incredible students who want to change the world. These people empower me each day, lift me up when I am down, and provide the most magical environment for all our campers and their families. My college experience has been defined by Camp Kesem and I would not want it any other way!"

October 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

September 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

Ashley Lundin, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Vice President of Recruitment for the Panhellenic Association and Membership Chair for Alpha Xi Delta

Favorite Leadership Quote: "The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already" -John Buchan

September 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

2018-2019 Authentic Leader of the Year!

Congratulations to our 2018-2019 Authentic Leader of the Year, Veronica Smith! Thank you for all that you do and for making UW-Madison a brighter place.

Come back next year to see who wins next!

April 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

Hamzeh Salti, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: I currently am the chief intern at Carbon World Health and a Standards Board member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity.

Favorite Leadership Quote: "Strong leaders are those that identify the strengths in others"

April 2019 Authentic Leader of the Month

March 2019 Authentic Leader Of The Month

Shelby Herring, Junior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: I am the Director for the Alternative Breaks Committee. I have been a part of the Alternative Breaks Committee for three years now!

Favorite Leadership Quote: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama

March 2019 Authentic Leader Of The Month

February 2019 Authentic Leader Of The Month

Rachel Alsbury, Junior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: I currently serve as a teaching fellow for the Wisconsin Experience Seminar and as a SOAR Programming Intern. Both positions run through the Center for the First Year Experience.

Favorite Leadership Quote: "You don't need to be a voice for the voiceless, just pass the mic." - Dr. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer

February 2019 Authentic Leader Of The Month

December 2018 Authentic Leader Of The Month

Veronica Smith, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Lead Peer Mentor in the Bradley Learning Community

Favorite Leadership Quote: "Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you." -Ruth Bader Ginsburg

December 2018 Authentic Leader Of The Month

November 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

Gabrielle Aranda, 5th year senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: I founded the non-profit and student organization, For All Women, that aims to raise Awareness about disparities that marginalized women face in accessing reproductive healthcare.

Leadership Role Model: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is my newest role model because she came from nothing to speaking out about injustice at the governmental level and is the youngest person elected to Congress.

November 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

May 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

Courtney Wong, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Organization Outreach Coordinator at the Student Leadership Program

Favorite Leadership Quote: "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe." The omniscient, Simon Sinek

April 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

Kendra Trost, senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Student Retail Association, Student Mentor and Case Competition Coordinator: Kohl's Center for Retailing

Favorite Leadership Quote: “Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared...We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” J.K. Rowling

April 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

February 2018 Authentic Leader Of The Month

Sam Carlson, Senior

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: Sam's leadership qualities are no better showcased than by his work with Action 2 Africa. Action 2 Africa is a non-profit Kenyan-based organization that Sam started while living in Kenya. A2A helps provide education and economic empowerment to those who would otherwise be relegated to substandard living conditions. Even while working through his final year of rigorous nursing classes and clinicals, Sam finds the time to help those less fortunate and leads by example.

Favorite Leadership Quote: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative

February 2018 Authentic Leader Of The Month

January 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

Nicholas Munce, Senior

Role Model: One of my role models is former Starbucks CEO and philanthropist Howard Schultz. Howard grew from humble beginnings to great levels of success, while continuing to honor his roots. He works with inner-city housing projects and job preparation programs to ensure that all young people have a chance to advance themselves.

Favorite Leadership Position/Opportunity: My favorite leadership position is my current Officership at the Wisconsin Union! I love working with other student leaders to plan, produce, and execute community-building events on campus. Working together with my peers to take an event from conception to execution is an incredible experience.

Favorite Leadership Quote: "People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care" — John C. Maxwell

January 2018 Authentic Leader of the Month

November 2017 Authentic Leader of the Month

Sydney Weiser, Senior

Leadership Involvement: WUD Cuisine Director

Favorite quote about leadership: "But though we maybe able to think like mountains, we must act as human beings. To begin the global task to which we are called, need some particular place to begin, some particular place to stand, some particular place in which to initiate the small, reformist changes that we can only hope may some day become radically transformative." - Coming in to the foodshed by Jack Kloppenburg Jr., John Hendrickson, and G. W. Stevenson.

November 2017 Authentic Leader of the Month

October 2017 Leader of The Month

Jacob Hellman, 5th year Ph.D Candidate

Leadership Involvement: Advisory Chair, Beta Theta Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, the National Co-Ed Community Service Fraternity

Favorite leadership position: I pledged Alpha Phi Omega as an undergraduate, and it has been opening doors for me ever since. For the past four years, I have worked with over 100 UW-Madison students I proudly call my brothers as they serve our campus and our community. I dreamed of merging my two passions - service and theatre - and made that dream a reality by creating a workshop entitled Exploring Your Leadership, Friendship, and Service Through Devised Theatre, which I debuted at our fraternity's biennial National Convention last year in Pittsburgh, PA. Leading brothers from across the country in a workshop that I designed about the possibilities of theatre and how to use those tools to embody their own experiences of our three cardinal principles - leadership, friendship, and service - resulted in a creative and diverse series of performance art pieces exploring why we do what we do

May 2017 Leader Of The Month

Ben Smith, Sophomore

Leadership Involvement: Vice Chief Justice, ASM Student Judiciary; Member, Student Misconduct Panel; President, The Colony Soccer Student Section

Favorite Leadership Quote: "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." - Winston Churchill

March 2017 Leader Of The Month

Michael Fix, Senior

Leadership Involvement: President of Transcend

Role Model: Matt Younkle. I had the privilege of getting to know him early in my college career and he is a huge inspiration to keep driving.

February 2017 Leader of the Month

Meredith Braza, Junior

Leadership Involvement: President of Students for Families and Children, Chair of Student Leadership Program, Historian and Public Relations Chair for Phi Upsilon Omicron - National Honors Society of Family and Consumer Sciences, Badger Volunteers Team Leader, Undergraduate Teaching Fellow

Favorite Leadership Quote: "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." - Ralph Nader

January 2017 Leader of the Month

Stuart Deets, Junior

Leadership Involvement: President of the Chazen Ambassadors, Co-President of the Art History Society, #UWSocial Member and a BIG 10 Leadership Network member

Role Model: DeRay Mckesson. Because of his work with education and with Campaign Zero, a campaign to end police brutality, I think he, among others, is one of the next group of leaders in our country. His story tells us that we can all be activists. His story tells us that we can all be leaders. He inspires me to use the platforms I have to stand up for what I believe in.

November 2016 Leader of the Month

Maikoau Vang, 5th year Senior

Leadership Involvement: Chair of the Hmong American Student Association; Parliamentarian of alpha Kappa Delta Phi International Sorority, Inc.

Role Model: My father is a leader within himself and is someone who does not give up no matter how hard life may get. My father is a perfect example of someone that grew up with nothing and was able to turn that "nothing" into "something".

October 2016 Leader Of The Month

Mitchell Forbes, Senior

Leadership Involvement: Co-President of Pre-Physician Assistant Club, University of Wisconsin-Madison Cheerleader, & Leadership Certificate Applicant

Role Model: My mother. She has pushed me to be the best person I can be, whether it be helping others or helping myself succeed in life.

April 2016 Leader Of The Month

Jillian Leenay, Senior
Actuarial Science and Risk Management & Insurance

Campus Involvement: President of the UW-Madison Actuarial Science Club

Most Memorable Leadership Experience: Leading the Actuarial Club as President. Before I was President, I was the Vice President of Member Relations and Engagement. This background gave me the push and motivation to really get to know as many members as possible. We have a club of 411 members, which makes this pretty hard. However, it is easy to get caught up and lost in a club like this and that is why my goal has been to really interact with everyone. Doing this I have made a countless amount of friendships and have mentored many people. I will never forget all of the joy that doing this brought me and I hope to continue this into my full time career.

March 2016 Leader Of The Month

Paria Sanaty Zadeh, Grad Student
School of Pharmacy

Campus Involvement: School of Pharmacy Student Ambassador and Student Connections Leader; Founder and current chair of the School of Pharmacy Doctor of Pharmacy and Pharmacology-Toxicology Research Symposium; Founder of the Clinical Pharmacy Pathways and Specialties Video Series

Role Model: Elon Musk, founder of revolutionary companies such as Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He has transformed multiple industries through his innovative, visionary thinking, ability to inspire and lead others toward his vision, propensity for courageous risk-taking, and incredible resilience to adversity. The great sacrifices he has made and the passion he puts into his work to create such forward-thinking industry game-changers inspires me. His achievements motivate me to never settle for the status quo, and to always keep questioning how things are done, pushing the boundaries, and finding ways to make things better. Most importantly, his story has taught me to refuse to ever give up on achieving my vision, even when on the brink of failure. "Don't be afraid of new arenas. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." –Elon Musk

Favorite Quote: "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." –Jack Welch

February 2016 Leader Of The Month

Rachel Wanat, Senior
Political Science & English Literature

Campus Involvement: 2015-2016 director of WUD Publications

Favorite Quote: Pretty much anything that Leslie Knope, leader extraordinaire, has ever said.

January 2016 Leader Of The Month

Madison Eckle, Junior
English Language and Literature, with certificates in entrepreneurship and digital studies

Campus Involvement: Editor-in-Chief of Her Campus Wisconsin, an online magazine. Here leadership has led to the expansion of the Her Campus Wisconsin team and increased their chapter standing to Gold level.

"Before joining Her Campus, I had this crazy unreal idea that being a leader wasn't an area in which you could grow in. After hitting my year anniversary being Editor in Chief of Her Campus Wisconsin, I've reflected on the experiences of 2015, like attending HerConference, a women's leadership conference in New York. With the help from skills learned at this conference, I've been able to adjust my forms of leadership for different people, obtain nearly impossible goals with help from an amazing exec board, delegate tasks and (for the first time in my life) happily take constructive criticism. While I have years to go in being a leader like Anna Wintour or Leslie Knope, I am excited to grow with Her Campus and our amazing team at the University of Wisconsin!"