This year marks 20 years for UNC’s Stryker Institute for Leadership Development, and 该项目继续 为学生带来改变，并赋予他们领导力 技能，继续和改变别人的生活.
As the Stryker Institute for Leadership Development prepared to celebrate its 20th anniversary in late September, it did something it has been doing since its beginnings: It gave voice 致参与变革努力的 女性. Stryker Scholars were 在 上询问这个项目对他们生活的影响——而且是指数级的影响 the people and communities around them — and they shared an outpouring of strength, gratitude and community:
“I have grown a lot as a woman and as a professional. Coming from a family where no 兄弟姐妹都念完了中学，而我父母都没念完 the end of elementary, I am now blessed with a master’s degree and with a very high 我的孩子也有可能接受高等教育，拥有更光明的未来... Because of you believing in me, my life was transformed.”
“作为一个年轻、贫穷的单身母亲，我感到压力很大，仅此而已 I could see within myself. Stryker helped to change that.”
“I think the most impactful aspect by far is that I have agency, I have power in how my story ends. I am not alone.”
“The leadership skills cultivated while in Stryker empowered me to believe in myself and to help others do the same (including my girls).”
“Stryker helped me find my voice and made me feel comfortable in leadership positions. Now with a family and two daughters, I wish to pass on that understanding of leadership and empowerment. 我还希望向她们展示，与女性同胞在一起 of color is a powerful and wonderful experience.”
“Being the first one from my siblings to graduate from high school and college allowed 我看到我不仅会改变自己的未来，也会改变我的未来 children.”
“I do not believe I would have had the opportunity to pursue higher education without this experience. 意识到史崔克的机会是如此独特，我只是 希望世界各地大学的学生也能得到同样的待遇 受教育的机会，以及对身份认同的反思 to obtain through this experience.”
The Stryker program’s work to elevate women economically, and to nurture leadership skills, understanding and agency, has transformed the lives of 524 Stryker Scholars, and in the process has made a difference for so many others.
A Ripple Effect
Established in 2001 with a $1.25 million gift from UNC alumna Ronda Stryker ’76, the Stryker Institute for Leadership Development offers scholarships and leadership training as a participation-based scholarship program. It serves students identifying as women from underrepresented groups and supports scholars in their identity and leadership development. 自那以后，Stryker公司为该项目贡献了1100多万美元 今后几年再认捐400万美元.
Stryker, who earned her Bachelor of Arts at UNC in Special Education and Sociology, has said that if you help a woman, you can change the trajectory of her life and her family in ways that ripple throughout her community and world.
Ronda Stryker ’76
Stryker grew up with a sense of helping others. Her mother grew up with missionary parents in China; her grandfather, an orthopedist, developed tools to help others, launching Stryker Medical Corp, a global corporation.
She came to UNC in September 2001 for the dedication of the Institute in Scott-Wilcoxon Hall. “这更多是为了学生，而不是为了我，”她当时说. “It’s about being able to follow a dream.”
The institute has held to that ideal, giving Stryker scholars opportunities to pursue 他们的梦想- 使他们能够进入 他们的社区准备好了领导 their life and professions.
当朗达在皇冠app官方版下载读书时，她和一个移民农场家庭呆在一起 塑造了她的愿景，并成为 催化剂，促使她向 UNC捐款. She envisioned her contribution to enable and empower women from underrepresented groups who would benefit from additional opportunities and resources.
In a 2001 article for UNC’s Spectrum magazine, Stryker said, “I think it has always been part of me. 从我出生起，我就有一种想看的东西 people follow their dreams.”
From Day One
Noemi ’02 and Elizabeth ’19 Medina — Stryker Scholars 20 years apart — developed leadership
在课堂和社区中发挥作用的技能.
It was late July and like many teachers around the country, Noemi Medina ’02 and Elizabeth 麦地那的19 是 返校采购教室. Both teach at Greeley’s Salida Del Sol Academy，这是一所K-8双浸入式学校，妈妈Noemi担任第二名教师 grade, and daughter Elizabeth is a third-grade teacher.
“We had a list,” says Noemi. “We said, ‘This is what we’re going to get, and we just got it, that’s it, and we’re done.’”
As teachers, they have a common interest in their students — in making their learning 环境友好，有效，给他们在学校一个良好的开端. But that’s not all they have in common. Noemi was in the very first cohort of Stryker Scholars 伊丽莎白于2019年以斯特赖克学者的身份从皇冠app官方版下载毕业.
伊丽莎白记得她母亲和她的“史崔克姐妹”一起学习 herself was about four or five years old. “I remember playing with the daughter of one of her (Stryker) sisters. We would always be underneath the table coloring while they were studying,” she says. “So, I was actually with Stryker since day one, and when I came to UNC, I knew I was going to be a teacher.”
As Noemi worked to make her dreams of teaching a reality, she got to know and work with women in the earliest days of the program, when many of the women in the program were non-traditional students with children.
“当我看到现在的Stryker时，它与我们做的相比已经改变了. We’d get together, study and just kind of bond,” she says. “Now, not only do they focus on leadership, 但他们真正关注的是教你如何拥有你的身份，拥有你是谁 as a person, and to love yourself for who you are, and how you can use your identity to empower you into the leader that you are,” Noemi says.
诺埃米从小就被灌输教育的重要性. Born in Mexico, she came to the United States when she was two years old and says her father would tell her and her siblings, “I’m here to work for you guys. You guys make sure you get an education.” She took his words to heart. From high school she went to school 为了获得美容执照， 然后 开始上课成为一名教师.
She administered English language assessments for District 6 before becoming a school secretary at Billy Martinez Elementary School in Greeley. While there, she was encouraged to pursue her education degree. “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. That was one of my plans,” she says.
Her husband also encouraged her. “I worked during the day and at night I did my schooling,” she says, adding that her husband and mother-in-law helped with Elizabeth while she worked on her degree.
Financially, Noemi says the generous Stryker scholarship made a critical difference. “当时，我丈夫刚刚开始他的总承包业务. So, financially it helped a lot, but it also helped me become a leader, because I never thought I was a leader,” she says. “我总是对自己更有兴趣，只是安静， (Stryker) 帮助了我 me bring that leadership out. I hear that from a lot of Stryker scholars, how (time together) brings joy to them because they’re able to be themselves and not be afraid to get judged.”
In addition to scholarship support, students receive a laptop computer and participate 在研讨会、讨论和活动中培养他们的领导能力. The program also partners Stryker scholars with eighth-grade students at Salida del Sol in a big sister/little sister mentoring program.
社区的那些时刻 和理解 是这个项目的标志，也是 what so many Stryker scholars remember as life changing.
Reimagining Leadership
伊维特说:“这个项目的领导力部分 从第一天起就在 Lucero-Nguyen ’09, director of the Stryker Institute. “I think the lens through which we view leadership has started to be refined based on what’s happening in our society and what the needs are.”
卢塞罗-阮在过去的九年里一直指导这个项目，他看到了 impact Stryker has had on students and on alumni as they reach out to their communities.
“They spend that first year establishing a foundation of understanding on social justice while focusing on understanding their identities, asking, ‘How do I understand them 在我们的社会背景下，在特权和压迫之下?’ Once we have 通过身份发展对自己的理解，我们允许它成为 通过这个镜头，我们在第二年开始探索领导力. By doing so, we can better understand how we navigate as leaders, and how it’s different for each one of us based on the identities that we hold. It became a foundational piece that we realized needed to exist, to really understand how to unpack our leadership, and 如何使用 身份 作为授权的工具，以及 到 能够领导.”
That approach to leadership is unique.
“它挑战了传统的领导标准，以及我们认定的领导者. 如果我们把一群人排在一起，然后 说， 选出你认为是领导者的人. Who would that be?“ 我认为 人们 被传统观点所吸引， 只是 based on how they appear. And we don’t do that. We take that and say that doesn’t exist.”
这种方法可以帮助学生看到，作为领导者，他们可以如何支持他人. “It helps them to be aware of others, and their identities, and the communities they are from,” says Lucero-Nguyen. “It helps them ask, ‘How do I acknowledge and support the identities others hold,’ whether it’s in the classroom with their students, or it’s as a nurse with their patients? I hear consistently how they’ve learned to navigate 作为领导者，运用他们的声音，并理解为什么这很重要.”
Those lessons help them reach out into their families and their communities as well. “The way in which our students take what they learned here, and share it with other 人们，无论是他们的兄弟姐妹，父母，学生， 他们的病人，客户，不管是谁，这就是连锁反应. We say, ‘If you share that knowledge with other people, and invest in other people, the way 我们有你们所有人，然后连锁反应就会不断发生，’”她说.
Building a Safe Classroom
伊莉莎白 麦地那作为史崔克学者在学校度过了四年， says that the seminars and discussions have helped her talk about subjects that may have been difficult to give voice to before.
“As teachers, we have to take it into our classroom. Our kids have to know there’s a safe haven there. 我们通过Stryker学到的很多东西 ，我们实际上都在使用 in our classroom with our kids,” she says. “They have to know they’re able to talk 对某个人，信任某个人，做自己就可以了. And when you have a classroom 像那样， 那里 他们感到安全， 你的学年很棒.”
Creating a classroom that is safe creates a classroom where students can learn, and 今天的教室存在于一个与上一代人不同的社会中. Elizabeth says that knowing how to answer questions students are curious about has been an important skill for her.
“说实话，当我创办Stryker时，我对这些话题一无所知. They 我们在家里没有讨论的事情，是不是来自传统的墨西哥人 home,” she says. “很难 坐在 桌旁，然后说 ‘好吧， 我们就这么做吧 皇冠app安卓下载安装种族主义的讨论， 或者我们来讨论一下性.’
“Last year was the first year we had a topic about sexuality come up in a third-grade classroom. Those are now the standard norms for students. It was easy for me to be able to have an open conversation with my students about it because I have the background, thanks to Stryker,” she says. “Our world is not the same, and it’s going to be constantly changing. Stryker确实帮助我们打开了一种心态 我们必须持续 作为成年人和人类继续学习， 因为我们必须跟上将要发生的事情 be coming in our world from here on out.” UNC
–By Debbie Pitner Moors
