JCI Awardee for Leadership Rhoda Essien uses her leadership role to help others, not just for the title

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JCI Awardee for Leadership Rhoda Essien (Photo by Robert A Emmanuel)
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By Robert A. Emmanuel

[email protected]

For Rhoda Essien, the recipient of the JCI Senator Clovis St Romain Leadership Award, leadership represented more than a title but a commitment to others.

During an interview with Observer media, Essien explained that she has always been thrust into the leadership position, without seeking it, mainly on account of her hard-working personality.

“I am not thinking about it from the leadership perspective, I am just thinking about it from just helping others in any sort of way I can, and I will take up the mantle.

“So, I am just seeing where life takes me, because even with my leadership positions, it is not necessarily that I put myself into them, but they sort of find me,” Essien stated.

Essien remarked that when her friend nominated her for the award, and it was announced that she’d won it last week, she was elated, and felt that it was her work being appreciated.

“It is nice to know that someone can see all of my achievements and deem it necessary to say ‘she did her work, and I want to recognise her’ because in my mind, I am not necessarily doing things for the positions,” she said.

Essien revealed during the interview the individual who put her on the path of leadership.

“So, I would see my friends in the past get this award, and even Kamalie Mannix—he is somebody who would have started my whole leadership journey—would have been nominated and won the award,” she revealed.

Mannix, who is the President of the National Youth Parliament of Antigua and Barbuda (NYPAB), won the leadership award in 2021.

Essien also had a message for persons who are interested in taking up leadership roles.

“The fact that you are thinking about it means that you are interested, and if you think that there is something inside of you, then go for it,” she said, encouraging persons to view the role as a “learning experience.”

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