Leadership as a Journey: Geneva Newell's Story From Student Volunteer to the Board of Directors

Starting out with EWB-USA

My passion for EWB-USA’s work started before I was even accepted to college. I attended an engineering summer program at Cal Poly, SLO that opened up a world of possibilities, one of which being their campus’ chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Learning that I could develop technical skills that could directly benefit underserved communities had me hooked. As soon as I stepped into my first EWB-Cal Poly meeting in Fall 2019, I was eager to do all I could to ensure our project’s success. Our project was about more than just technical aspects like finding efficiencies and cost-savings, it was about working hand in hand with the 250 residents of Mali Island, Fiji to ensure they had sustainable access to clean drinking water.

In my first quarter of college I took on the role of my project’s fundraising lead where I was able to leverage the fundraising skills I developed in high school to teach other students and work as a team to implement new fundraising strategies. I continued on that path becoming the fundraising lead coordinator of the whole chapter my sophomore year, where I navigated many challenges, including the global pandemic. While I enjoyed fundraising and taking on high-level responsibilities at the chapter level, I knew I wanted to pivot to a position with more hands-on work and results that I could see. Which led me to step into the role of project manager of our Fiji team for my final two years of college.

Growing As a Leader and an Academic

During my time as a project manager, I was able to develop my interpersonal skills, like setting goals, delegating tasks within a team environment, and crafting my own leadership style. I also organized and led our team’s first trip to Fiji in four years, rekindled a team spirit in the wake of COVID-19 disruption, and complete construction of water infrastructure that to this day continues to support the people of Mali island.

My EWB-USA experience also allowed me the opportunity to co-lead a research team that sought to bring community perspectives and human-centered design methodologies into an engineering project in which we developed a modified-biosand filter with locally accessible materials in Fiji. That project, two years after completion, has now been published in a health journal that seeks to serve Fiji and other Pacific islands, Pacific Health! The entire process taught me the power of grit and resilience as a leader, because it took deep determination to push for non-traditional research practices and to stay true to our mission of publishing our research as a free resource to those who can directly benefit from it.

Exploring New Opportunities as a Professional and Stepping into a National Leadership Role

I now use the leadership skills I gained as an EWB-USA volunteer with the Cal Poly Student Chapter at the Portland Professional Chapter, where I lead a much larger project that is set to serve over 2,300 people in rural Rwanda. With my previous experience, I feel far more capable of tackling the challenges that our project team may face. I am now able to lead in more of a mentor-like capacity, where I can pull on my years of experience to coach my current team members and help them to cultivate the same passion I have for giving back through EWB-USA.

I am also quite proud to hold the title of Student Representative to EWB-USA’s Board of Directors. To be involved at the highest level of leadership of this organization, the same one that inspired me to pursue engineering, continues to blow my mind every single day. In my capacity as a board member, I am seeing and providing leadership through a lens I had never seen before. At the board level, we think strategically, focusing less on the minutiae of operations and execution of initiatives. We aim instead to determine what the bigger picture ideas for EWB-USA are like: How do we navigate the ever-changing space we are in? Where do we want to grow? What should we look like as an organization in the future? I am surrounded by a group of accomplished professionals, which can be simultaneously intimidating (since I am less than two years out of college) but is also empowering because I am given the platform to express my perspective, because it truly does matter. No single leader is equipped to understand every idea or problem but by bringing our different perspectives together, we can navigate a path forward that will guide & empower EWB-USA for years to come.

Lessons in Leadership

My leadership journey started far before I joined EWB-USA, but there is no doubt that my experiences within this organization have helped me to craft and refine my leadership skills. The single greatest lesson EWB-USA has taught me is to “Value every voice” to reach out to others when you are unsure and to listen and learn from them. At the board, I look to other board members with financial/strategy development experience. At the Portland Professional chapter, I look to our new members who have 20+ years of engineering experience but limited EWB-USA project background to get their perspectives. At Cal Poly I collaborated with non-engineering students and professors to find our gaps and enrich our work. And on every travel trip, I ask women and girls from the communities we partner with about themselves, their goals, and how we can work to make them achievable. By valuing every voice, we develop better partnerships with our communities, better leaders at our chapters, and we can strive to build a better world together.