Learning by Leading

Harvard has many leaders. As students at a prestigious university, we can assume that in one way or another, all of us are leaders. I have had the opportunity to witness young leaders of every race, geographic origin, personality type, and skill level over the past four years as I’ve directed Minga, a nonprofit organization that my friends and I founded in 2006. Minga works to educate teens about the global child sex trade and to empower them to take action against it. My community defines me as a leader, but as I manage  $80,000 budget and provide programming for 10,000 plus youths annually, I find myself wondering why I am a “leader.”

My high school offered a class called “Leadership and Diversity.” While the course and its instructors were well intentioned, the class aimed to make students leaders without letting them lead anything. Sure, we can learn about leadership styles by studying examples of great leaders, but leadership is something we learn by doing, not just by discussing. I’ve been trying to understand what good leaders actually do for a while, and I still cannot tell you a list of traits, skills, or experiences that good leaders have beyond what “Leadership for Dummies” might suggest. My understanding of leadership as it pertains to public service, community enrichment, and business is best described through the exploration of cupcakes and young social entrepreneurs.

A cupcake is made of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter—common ingredients. Assembled correctly, these ingredients form a delicious cake base and a fluffy frosting topping. Now, imagine you are biting into a perfect cupcake. Yes, you’ll need a napkin or 10 because you will have frosting on your fingers and your face. Eating your cupcake is messy. So is dissecting leadership. A good leader is able to take common ingredients—intellect, a team, objectives, and resources—and make his or her project look as sexy as a deluxe cupcake. But good leaders are constantly cleaning up the messes that they make. Leaders are always struggling to trust their intellect, to motivate their teams, to reach objectives, and to find enough resources.

Good leaders exhibit professionalism. They are able to use their core competencies to overproduce. From my experiences, not from readings, or lectures, or academia, I’ve come to define leadership as the ability to motivate individuals to combine assets in order to exceed the potential of any one individual.

Nancy Lubin, CEO and “Chief Old Person” of Do Something, a New York City based nonprofit that helps teens rock social causes, directs programming for over two million teens annually. Nancy sees every basic ingredient, from high school interns, to politicians, to employees at major banks, to notebooks at Staples as opportunities to create more from less. Her book, “Zilch,” explores 11 lessons that for-profit leaders can learn from the non-profit sector. Nancy epitomizes my concept of a teacher of leadership. She invests in people that she works with not by paying them exorbitant salaries or sending them to global leadership conferences but by giving them responsibility. She holds her staff, the young activists with whom she works, and her business partners accountable. She trusts “leaders” who are 13 to 20 years old with the responsibility of working to solve some of our world’s most pressing social pandemics.

Organizations like The Unreasonable Institute, StartingBloc, and EchoingGreen give young social entrepreneurs a chance to expand their impact. Matthew Kochman is the founder of the M.E.S.S. Express, a transportation service that is Moving Every Student Safely. To date, Matthew has provided over 15,000 students with safe transportation. His venture is not only sustainable, but also inherently good for his community. In 2001, an estimated 2.8 million college students operated a vehicle under the influence of alcohol. Thanks to Matthew’s vision, thousands of students have chosen to use M.E.S.S. Express transportation services instead.

Sejal Hathi is a sophomore at Yale University. At age 15, Sejal founded Girls Helping Girls, a California-based organization dedicated to pairing girls in the U.S. with girls in developing nations to address community issues through microlending projects. Sejal and her team of girls have trained and mobilized over 30,000 girls worldwide to explore the possibilities of entrepreneurship.

Our generation is full of outstanding young leaders who produce impressive solutions to global plagues.  We can try to define leadership with words or with cupcakes, but these definitions do not give leaders like Nancy Lublin, Matthew Kochman, or Sejal Hathi the credit they deserve. We can try to teach leadership in classrooms, and we might come out of class thinking about leadership in a more academic way. But we can only define and learn leadership by doing it. Choose a cause, our world offers many issues—find some friends who share your interest, and do something.

Rebecca S. Kantar ’14 lives in Weld Hall.