Hello everyone,

First of all, I'd like to thank Bob Augustine for inviting me to participate in this thread. I've been reading through the posts on this forum and have found all of you very inspiring!

Over the past couple years, I have had what I consider multiple opportunities to develop my leadership skills. What I consider my first baby steps into leadership began shortly after my clinical fellowship year when I moved from a rehabilitation hospital where I was one of 10 SLPs to a rural community hospital where I was a speech therapy team of one - me! Change is often scary, and this was no exception. I knew I had to demonstrate attributes of an assured leader in this new setting, and I found lots of support on the ASHA Special Interest Group forums. The more I learned from the SIG forums and applied it to my individual practice, the more confident I became in my leadership abilities. With this, I was able to develop programs that enriched my practice as well as the lives of my patients, including developing a head and neck cancer program to improve swallowing outcomes in our head and neck cancer patients.

I continued to develop my role as a leader through my involvement in the ASHA Committee for the Next Generation, which strives to amplify the voices and the leadership roles available to the Early Career Professionals who are just beginning to develop their role in ASHA themselves. As chair of the Technology subcommittee, I helped develop a community for ASHA's developing leaders with the assistance of my wonderful colleagues within the Committee (all leaders in their own right!).

Finally, my current work as a traveling therapist has forced me to continuously adapt and rebuild. I have been fortunate to have lived and worked in Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and New Jersey, and through that have encountered so many different settings, cultures, and leaders in their respective fields. It is truly a gift to be able to learn ways to improve my leadership skills through observing others. As I embark on my next adventure (I plan on moving to the UK at the beginning of 2019 to continue working as an SLP, or speech language therapist as it's called there), I hope to continue to be able to expand my leadership skills through the experiences and knowledge I develop on the other side of the pond.

In summary, what I have found has helped me most in developing my leadership skills has been pushing myself out of my comfort zone and taking chances that may have seemed scary at first but expanded my scope of experience. It's nice to know that wherever I am in the world, I have a wonderful group of ASHA leaders to look to for inspiration!