2007 New Leader Spotlight: Mary Small   School: University of North Carolina Program: 2007 CPL New Leader Internship: Bonner Group

How have you been a leader in your community?

I head a disaster relief organization on my university campus that has partnered with Biloxi, Mississippi to work towards the full restoration of the Gulf Coast. I am a co-coordinator of the Millennium Village Project, which has allowed me to be one of the people driving the discussion about economic development, extreme poverty and the role of the university to act as a catalyst for global change on my campus. Lastly, I have had the privilege of being a direct advocate for different immigrant communities in Chapel Hill.

What are your long-term leadership interests?

Although I’ve found some new lenses this summer through which to think about it, I continue to feel a tension between my desire to work directly with the communities I care about in a position of direct advocacy and my desire to affect change at the policy level.

What does “Progressive” mean to you?

To be a Progressive means to continually examine the power relationships around you and to consistently and actively work to make them increasingly equitable and inclusive.

What long-term change do you want to help bring to your state?

I would like to be involved in helping North Carolina pursue quality and comprehensive education for the children of immigrant communities, particularly those who are in the process of learning English. Additionally, I hope to help my university and state divest from both Sudan and Myanmar.

How do you envision the New Leaders Program in helping you achieve your goals?

The weekly trainings and skill set I learned at my internship site will definitely be helpful to me in the future. My mentor has also been a tremendous asset to me both in terms of her guidance during our weekly conversations and her willingness to connect me to resources relevant to the particular issues I'm passionate about. I also hope that the relationships built between the New Leaders themselves will prove helpful on a large scale by providing personal connections to be the cohesive between different sectors of the sometimes-fragmented Progressive Movement.

What attracted you to the CPL New Leaders Program?

The rhetoric of empowerment is what first attracted me to the New Leaders Program; the idea of spending a summer working and learning alongside emerging leaders from historically underrepresented communities was very exciting. I hoped that the New Leaders Program would offer a space in which cross-community conversational and collaborations could take place.

What did you get out of the New Leaders Program?

The most important thing I got out of the Program was a sense of the Progressive Movement. All of my work prior to this summer has been very issue-specific with resources and networks particular to that singular effort. For the first time, I now have a grasp of what an all-encompassing Progressive Movement might look like. More than any skill I've learned or training I've received, it is probably this sense that there are so many others working alongside me, on different issues but towards the same broad goal, that has been the most empowering.