Kristina Whyte is a current participant in the Emerging Leaders program’s NYC cohort.
She is a Certified Public Accountant with ten years of experience in financial reporting, auditing and taxation. She currently works at the Wallace Foundation, whose mission is to provide funding to education and arts programs for children in underserved areas. Here she shares
Emerging Leaders is more than just a professional development program; it is a journey towards self-discovery. Our first session as emerging leaders began with identifying who we are as individuals, identifying our strengths, weaknesses, how we learn, and how we interact with others. It was especially telling during our post assessment of the Myers Brigg (MB) survey. Before we saw the results Yael broke us up into different groups based upon our assessment- a distinction that only Yael was aware of. We were asked to perform specific tasks based upon our MB results. Seeing how similar each group of people’s thought processes or decisions making skills were and how closely aligned they were to the MB character traits was amazing.
Those “Ah ha” moments are what I enjoyed most when I walked into a session with Yael and fellow emerging leader classmates.
Our sessions are a safe space to be ourselves and share openly about the issues we’ve faced in our careers. We’re free to share pivotal events that have impacted our growth within the non-profit space.
I learned very early on from Emerging Leader alum Shena Elrington ’04 that “management is a skill” and I realized that I was in the right environment to develop that skill. We’ve discussed issues of emotional agility, implicit bias, receiving and giving feedback, public speaking, learning how to manage up and most importantly being our most authentic selves. Yael’s approach to teaching is actionable as we performed various exercises to highlight areas of weakness or strengths. She went one step further by teaching us the ways in which we can use this awareness to make decisions in our daily lives.
Ultimately the program has given me a network of individuals within the non-profit sector that I can rely on, learn from, grow with, but most importantly trust to give me constructive and honest feedback.
The relationships built with the men and women in my cohort continue to develop even outside of the class at Tribeca Tavern with a glass of wine or beer and good conversation after a long day of self-reflection and self-discovery.
The Leading Edge 