Welcome
Hello Everyone!
To start, I wanted to thank the Deakin Hallmarks panel for taking the time to review my portfolio, I really appreciate the opportunity to apply for this Hallmark.
My name is Cheryl Avila and I am a graduating Environmental Science (Environmental Management and Sustainability) student. During my time at Deakin University, I have explored and nurtured my passion for community engagement and environmental change. This passion was built during university opportunities including my time as an international conservation volunteer moving into a biodiversity officer role and most recently becoming an intern with a key environmental government body. These experiences have developed my leadership thinking on a variety of levels including personal, community and international.
I hope you enjoy learning about my leadership journey and wanted to thank you again.
For me, leadership is learning from a variety of perspectives, encouraging others to be their best selves and making an impact, in any way that I can. I am constantly defining and redefining leadership, I believe that leadership is a continuous learning journey. My journey with leadership started to materialise during my time at Deakin, realising that my values of curiosity, encouragement and support are the foundation for leadership. From this, I was able to expand my comfort zone to a range of contexts to foster my understanding of leadership and its different aspects. I believe that any experience can be a learning experience and that growth happens if you allow it. This informed my decisions to expand my learning environments, learning from diverse perspectives and having an impact in a range of contexts. Within my portfolio, there is a theme of how I discovered leadership through self, community, and international contexts.
Leadership to me
In this video, I wanted to introduce myself, explain what leadership means to me and explain how I have started my leadership journey whilst studying at Deakin.
Transcript
Welcome Everyone to my Portfolio!
My name is Cheryl, and I am studying the Bachelor’s of Environmental Science – the Environmental Management and Sustainability stream. I have found my passion for prompting change and working towards a better tomorrow. During my time, I have discovered that I can do this in many ways, not just limited to science!
This includes leadership. For me, leadership is having the ability to learn from a range of perspectives to expand my awareness, and ultimately advocate for others - in any way that I can. In my experience, leadership is built through a variety of experiences.
My own journey with leadership started by saying yes! In school, I never saw myself as a person who stands up on the stage and gives an impactful speech. However, when an opportunity came to be a community panellist with my Council – which led to a feature in the local newspaper – I said why not and went for it.
Since this pivotal moment, I have had the honour of being able to expand my own experiences, learn from a range of perspectives and have been able to represent people with similar experiences to me - that same feeling of never seeing themselves with the ability to influence others. I hope to continue having an impact in the future and am excited for what my journey with leadership entails.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my website and I hope you enjoy exploring my journey with leadership!
Have a great day!
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