Leadership Fellow: Bria Wurst!

By: Evelyn Ealey

This week’s leadership spotlight features Bria Wurst; a junior Public Health Studies major with minors in Health Communications, Psychology, and Leadership Studies. Bria is actively involved in the Leadership Fellows program and serves as the Director of Programming in which she assists in setting up forums, planning mentoring activities, organizing impactful bonding events, and overseeing the First-Year Mentoring Team. Getting involved in Leadership Fellows has been an integral part of Bria’s Elon experience, and she feels lucky to have the chance to collaborate with so many bright, special people.

Bria has taken many opportunities to be a leader on and off campus, which has brought her knowledge as to what best defines leadership. She feels that leadership is based on connectivity, inspiration, and motivation to make a difference within the community, no matter how big or small. She doesn't believe that leadership is strictly rooted in a person or a system that controls a group of people, and finds the most important aspects of leadership are a willingness to work with others and a drive to implement positive change in the world.

As a Leadership Fellow, Bria has learned the value of being a leader in her community, and she finds it significant because it impacts others in a positive way and inspires them to work towards a common goal. She finds leading with compassion and an open mind can make all the difference in changing an aspect of the community for the better. Bria believes inclusive, positive leadership is contagious and leading her community towards a goal may inspire others to lead in other spaces as well.

Although she has a few favorite leaders, Maya Angelou is one that particularly sticks out in Bria’s mind. She appreciates how Angelou emphasized the importance of making others feel heard, welcome, and cared for within a leadership setting. Maya Angelou believed in the power of leading with courage, kindness, and a willingness to help others in all that she did. Bria finds that her quote "A leader sees greatness in other people. Her nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees is herself" encapsulates the mindset that Maya Angelou held on leadership. Bria strives to lead with that same mindset and hopes to make people feel similarly within her own leadership experiences.