July 28, 2023

The Mandela Washington Fellowship, the flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), empowers young African leaders through academic coursework, leadership training, mentoring, networking, professional opportunities, and local community engagement. Since 2014, the U.S. Department of State has supported nearly 4,400 young leaders from across 49 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to develop their leadership skills and foster connections and collaboration with U.S. professionals through the Fellowship.

There are three tracks that the Fellows can pick when they choose to study in the United States – business, public management, and civic engagement. Drexel has hosted the Mandela Washington Fellowship since 2017 focusing on the civic engagement track. This directly aligns with President John Fry’s mission for Drexel to be the most civically engaged university in the country and speaks more broadly to Drexel’s goal to prepare our students for the global world around them. Even though the Fellows are not technically students, Drexel helps them learn more about the United States and how they can participate and engage in the world.

Associate Dean, Anne Converse Willkomm, has been involved with the Mandela Fellowship since its emergence at Drexel in 2017. Anne began as an Ignite Talk coach which allowed her to coach one fellow from Drexel’s cohort to present their research project at the annual Mandela Washington Fellowship Summit in Washington, DC. When asked about her time as an Ignite coach, Anne said that being a coach was the opportunity of a lifetime because she learned so much about the diverse set of research goals the fellows bring to the summit. Anne then took on the role of Principal Investigator which led her to apply for a $250K grant to help improve the developing fellowship program and shift it to a "hands-on learning" approach. She received the grant and continued to work with Drexel’s Mandela Fellows as an Academic Director up until she began her position at the Graduate College as Associate Dean. Currently, Anne acts as a workshop coach for the fellows, teaching various workshops such as Effective Communication for Leaders, The Art & Science of Influencing Others, and Public Speaking. In the first workshop – Effective Communication for Leaders, Anne discussed the elements of communication such communication as skills for leaders, exercises in listening, and barriers to effective communication. The workshop concluded with a hands-on exercise where the Fellows learned more about listening and observing in small groups to achieve an overall goal. The second workshop focused on Public Speaking and the need for Fellows to become effective public speakers to communicate their research goals. Anne noted that "while some Fellows are dynamic public speakers, others struggle – not everyone enjoys public speaking and in their professions as leaders of NGOs, medical facilities, social support service offices, and government offices, they need to be comfortable speaking to both small and large groups. Because of this, we focused on practicing. I tried to convey to the Fellows that to get comfortable with public speaking, you have to do it. The more you do it, the better you get." Finally, in her Art & Science of Influencing Others workshop, Anne and the Fellows focused on the importance of negotiation. This exercise allowed them to get out of their comfort zone and practice negotiating their research projects with one another.

Anne noted that this year she had to focus on ensuring that her workshops were inclusive and accessible because of the presence of both deaf and hearing Fellows. This led her to step out of her comfort zone as a coach into areas that were unfamiliar to her.

"This meant more research, which I found to be severely lacking – so much out there for how to engage with deaf folks, but little from the perspective of how a deaf person can enhance their communication skills. Nonetheless, in the final workshop, I spent a fair amount of time focusing on how deaf individuals could ensure they could take control of a meeting, show their strengths, and not get lost in the shuffle because of lip reading or waiting for their interpreter to engage."

Finally, Anne highlighted the relationships that she has formed with the Fellows over the past six years. She is particularly connected with the members of the 2018 and 2019 cohorts. She frequently talks to Suhaila Aboud, a 2018 Fellow who has done groundbreaking research with the United Nations in education around the medical and psychological treatment of rape victims in African countries. In 2019, Anne had the opportunity to spend seven weeks with the fellows, including their final week in Washington D.C. for the Mandela Washington Fellowship Summit. She was touched by the strong relationships the Fellows formed with one another and her. Some of the Fellows even gave her gifts from their home countries that Anne keeps in her office at the Graduate College. After the fellowship is over, the Fellows often connect with Anne through LinkedIn and Facebook to continue to share their accomplishments. She noted that "I love seeing the things they are accomplishing – I feel so inspired by their accomplishments – to know I had some (very small) part in it, is exciting."

Learn more about the Mandela Washington Fellowship Program by visiting Drexel Global.

Article by Rachel Mroz