 One of the aspects of the leadership initiative at the Ford School is to pair master of public policy students who are on their summer internship with an outside leadership coach. And that coach works closely with the student in whatever issues the student brings to the table, whether it's strengthening their leadership presence, showing up with confidence, finding their voice at the table. Those are the types of issues that we have found students bringing to the coaching and really growing over the course of their internship as the professionals and the leaders that they want to be. So I think the pairing that Jennifer does is excellent. They look at you as an individual and then they match you with a coach that's going to help you best with this process. So for me, I was paired with Adam. I've never worked with a leadership coach, so first time I was definitely nervous. I didn't know what it was going to look like. It was via Zoom, so we didn't get to meet in person. So that always has another layer of how is this going to look and how are we going to interact. But meeting him was awesome because right when I did, all my worries went away. I'm a Air Force veteran, so I just got out of the service and came to the Ford School. And Adam did the same. He was easy to talk to, very comfortable, very knowledgeable, and just a warm, safe place to kind of just discuss anything I need to discuss. So I'm going through a period where I have the GI Bill, so I want to stick around maybe and do some more school. But that's something I really wasn't sure about. Is that a right move professionally? Is that a right move for my family? Adam really gave me a great piece of advice. Head, heart, and gut method. He said, if everything's in alignment, you're making the right choice. So I was able to work with Adam to know what I want to do is continue school here at the University of Michigan and he has been helping me since work on what I need to work on. My coach was Sandra Bouteau. She is a founder of a D.C. base consulting firm that specializes in executive coaching. She is incredibly warm and very straightforward, which were two things I really appreciated in having in a coach. I felt like I was very comfortable with her. I worked as a fellow at the Chicago Mayor's Office, so we take on any project across the city of Chicago that would be interested in an extra hand. So in addition to the challenge of having to interact with a lot of different people and stakeholders across my projects, another challenge I had was needing to bring value onto projects and teams where I might not have a background. I had worked on a few sanitation projects. I have no background on waste management and I really struggled with really getting into the core material and I remember talking to Sandra about like, how can I better learn this material when it's so foreign to me and the advice she gave me was, Lynn, you're not going to work on waste management for the rest of your life. So instead of really trying to go as deep as you can, think about what is it that you can actually, how can you make connection across the content you're familiar with and leaning on your skills as a people navigator to actually be able to provide a more valuable deliverable. So last summer I had the opportunity to serve as an intern for the governor of Michigan, Governor Whitmer, and specifically in the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. I had the privilege of receiving coaching from an individual named Allen Booth. Within maybe five to ten minutes of interacting, I was able to see someone who was deeply invested in my development. What stood out to me about Allen's leadership is he never said, this is what you should do or this is how you should do it, but rather gathered my perspective and asked questions, what information do I need to be successful and what information do I need to communicate to others on my team to be successful. And this can be exceptionally hard when you're the youngest on the team, you have the least experience on the team and individuals are relying on you to deliver. This idea of him shifting my mindset to seeking out answers when I needed support, but also trusting that the Ford School has prepared me to do this job, not having the opportunity to work with Allen would have impacted both my internship experience as well as my development as a person and as a leader. And what he pushed me to understand is the importance of my work and to believe in myself.