Adia Lowther: Career Development: Attending professional networking events: 3 points

On October 12th, I participated in and was awarded at The Rise: Emerging Leaders Intensive—Leadership Development Summit. The purpose of the event was to commemorate the students in the 2025-2026 Rise Leadership cohort and to network with professionals. The event featured guest speakers including Roz Brewer, Stacey Abrams, and Shanae Benito, and focused on leadership, resilience, and personal growth. I felt honored to be recognized and inspired by the speakers’ experiences and insights. I can connect this with Braven Leadership and how we network and work on interpersonal relationships. 

The key points of the summit is strong, black, women in leadership. Stacy Abrams did an excellent speech on the importance of advocacy, and it challenged me to rethink how I show up for my community. It expanded my personal development by allowing me to gain insight on my leadership style. I learned that I need to work in developing relationships with my peers in college because you never know what opportunity could come my way. I can relate this to networking outside of Spelman and in the workforce.

The strengths of the summit was the panel speakers. They were amazing and I felt a genuine connection with what they were saying. A weakness was the length of the event. This could have been approved by making it longer so that we can network more with the speakers. I can connect the knowledge I gained with the experiences I had throughout RISE. I noticed that most of teh talks highlight the importance of self worth. This activity reinforces my commitment to servant leadership and I will build on this experience by creating spaces of reflection in leadership