Bridges, Bold Moves, and Big Lessons in Leadership

By Zoë Welsh, Program Coordinator, Office of Institutional Excellence and Engagement

Building Bridges and Growing as a Leader

At the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, my role is all about connection. As engagement coordinator within the Office of Institutional Excellence and Engagement, my day to day consists of keeping our office’s workflow moving, coordinating major initiatives like the Restorative Approaches Facilitator Workshops, and managing the Inclusive Excellence Council, supporting them in driving forward the School’s LEAD strategic plan. It’s work that reminds me every day that meaningful progress happens when people come together, share ideas, and collaborate across boundaries.

Still, I felt a strong pull to grow further as a leader, both in the work I do at the School of Pharmacy and across the larger UMB community. That’s why I joined UMB’s Emerging Leaders Program this past academic year, an experience that turned out to be both deeply transformative and reenergizing.

Emerging Leaders Program

The Emerging Leaders Program cultivates essential leadership skills and mindsets for faculty and staff at UMB. Through a 10-month curriculum of interactive sessions and collaborative dialogues, participants explored universal leadership principles that were tailored to the culture at UMB. Highlights included opportunities for personal growth, strategic thinking, and peer-driven learning to motivate the emerging leaders to enact positive change within their schools, departments, and the university.

Stepping Outside My Bubble

Going into the program, my main goal was straightforward: I wanted to step outside my comfort zone, outside my office, and outside the School of Pharmacy to connect with other leaders across campus. I also wanted to learn more about how I process situations and how I show up in different contexts so that I could better understand areas for growth, and begin to chart a path forward for myself to see where I could take all the potential that I know that is within me.

The program challenged me in exactly those ways. From interactive workshops to collaborative dialogues, I had the chance to meet other leaders from each of UMB’s schools, hear new perspectives, and test my own assumptions. I walked away with a much deeper sense of self-awareness, as well as stronger self-confidence and independence in my leadership style. For someone still early in their career, this felt like an important step for my personal development, but also toward the professional self-actualization I aspire to.

Lessons That Last

What made the Emerging Leaders experience so transformative wasn’t just the interdisciplinary curriculum, it was the community voice that added to its depth and nuance and made the content feel real. It made the content become actualizable and not just bullets on a Power Point. These were ideas, tools, and skills that are being used and applied currently in the UMB community by UMB community members who are sharing the diversity of ways that each skill can be espoused. We learned that being a leader is about everyday action and decision making regardless of role or position, and leadership is not for the few – it is for everyone. It is not just a solo pursuit but a collective endeavor.

Looking Ahead

My hope is to carry forward the insights I gained, in addition to all that I am learning through my MBA program at the University of Maryland, and continue to shape my role here at the School of Pharmacy. I’m more committed than ever to building bridges across units, breaking down silos, and fostering collaboration, especially as our community navigates ongoing uncertainty and change. Whether through my work in the Office of Institutional Excellence and Engagement executing our programming or by taking part in broader university initiatives, I am ready to be an engaged and visible community member and leader who prioritizes connection and mission-driven impact.

I’m excited to keep growing – as a leader, as a collaborator, and as part of this incredible UMB community.