This article is part of a series on engineering leadership at U of T. Over the past couple months, the ILead team interviewed emerging leaders and students in formal leadership roles to get their insights into leadership and experiences with ILead. Check back throughout the summer for more student profiles. #UofTEngineeringLeadership
During his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at U of T, Danny Farah (Year 1 MEng Mechanical Engineering) took on leadership roles by helping to found the Middle Eastern Students Association and becoming the VP Social at Chestnut Residence, but had never heard anything about ILead. Only after starting his MEng did he happen to find the personal leadership development opportunities that were hiding in plain sight.
His first exposure was a cryptic email about ILead’s The Game. The program immediately excited him as it was different than anything else being offered in the Faculty, a chance to think deeply and engage with social issues. The Game led Danny to focus his attention on social isolation and student club engagement.
Aside from The Game, Danny, also became interested in ILead’s various workshops, including the work of ILead:Grad and ILead Leadership Labs. These workshops helped to refresh his understanding of core leadership concepts around emotional intelligence and leadership styles.
All of those aside, the biggest personal takeaways from Danny’s ILead experience were as a result of his enrolment in Robin Sack’s (Instructor, ILead) The Happy Engineer (APS1010), a decision spurred on by the rave reviews of many of his friends. Learning about how our own internal mental models dictate how we interact with the world, he learned to overcome some of his fear of judgment from others while increasing his overall confidence.
As Danny continues with his degree, he finds ways to apply all he has learned from his various ILead experiences to help become more confident in making team decisions, map out his own priorities, and continue his work from The Game to work systemically to combat student isolation and disengagement. Knowing that there is always more to learn, no matter where we are on our leadership journeys is a vital realization, one that Danny has come to embrace in his work with ILead and beyond.