Year: Second Year
Major: Biology (leaning toward Cellular, Molecular, Developmental)
Hometown: Arlington, WA
Fun Facts:
1) I was born at my family’s home in Bothell, WA with a midwife present, and my life experiences have led me to consider midwifery as a career.
2) I go by my middle name. My full name is Mackenzie Kyle Nicole Kilmer.
Leadership Practice:
For my leadership practice I am organizing a 5K fun run (and walk) on campus to be hosted by Husky Running Club (HRC) and to raise money for UW Relay for Life. Although there are other leadership activities I’m involved with on campus, this is the one I wanted to focus on for my UWL practice for a variety of reasons. First of all, it will allow me to put a larger investment into organizations that I’m already involved in–as a group run leader and officer of HRC and as a 4-time Relay for Life participant in the past. Part of my intention is to provide Husky Running Club with an opportunity to become a closer and more collaborative community by offering them something productive to work together on and a cause to come together for. This idea of building community leads into my other major reason for choosing this as my leadership practice. Planning a 5K is something I can’t do independently. In order to make this a successful event I will need to work together with members of HRC, network with communities across campus, become familiar with on and off-campus resources and how to use them, and reach out to the campus community in order to organize volunteers and to bring participants to the event. I’m hoping that the process of planning an event from scratch will draw me out of my comfort zone and encourage me to develop leadership skills and embrace leadership styles which aren’t necessarily my natural element. I definitely identify as an introverted type, and although I like working with others and feel that I do derive energy from people (in moderation and/or small groups), my natural instinct is to work through the details alone and to share my work with others only when I feel it has measured up to my personal expectations. Throughout this project I hope to learn how to bring others into the process and delegate responsibility, how to ask for help, and how to talk though ideas with others throughout the process.