About
In 2023, NYU Steinhardt’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion launched the first year of the Empowering Your Inner Leader: First-Year Student Program on Leadership and Community Engagement!
The overarching purpose of this NYU Steinhardt First-Year Student Leadership program is to provide students from underrepresented groups (e.g. BIPOC, LGBTQ+, lower socioeconomic status) with a non-credited, compensated program dedicated to developing students’ inner leadership skills and positive contributions as valued NYU community members. The program operates with a foundation that students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences generate positive leadership qualities valued at NYU Steinhardt.
Program topics include the high school to college transition, leadership development, self-empowerment, educational equity, racial justice, and community building. Students will participate in community service engagement through NYU’s largest and free community service sector, College & Career Lab. The program also encompasses a study-away component.
Components
This program hopes to provide students with a year-long opportunity for:
Community building: space for students of similar and different identities to grow with one another and potentially bolster connections outside of class time
Self-development: provide students from underrepresented groups with a compensated program to learn and develop their inner leadership skills
Community engagement: use built leadership skills to contribute positively to the NYU community with the NYU College & Career Lab (CCL)
Instructor
This program is led by Hannah Youssef, Program Associate at the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Hannah’s passion for student advocacy, diversity work at NYU, and program and facilitation experience with UMass Amherst’s Women of Color Leadership Network and Upward Bound build a strong foundation from which she fosters an authentic and welcoming class space. She is a graduate of NYU Steinhardt’s Master’s program Higher Education and Student Affairs with a social justice focus on supporting diverse student communities and their basic needs fulfillment.