This week at Leadership Columbus consisted of doing many things so I thought I’d fill you guys in with what I did this week. I started the week working on a task that I was already familiar with. I went through a list of invitees for our 50th Anniversary Celebration and finding work addresses or confirming a home address to send a physical invite to them. This has been something I have been working on this summer before so it was nothing too hard.

However, the other task on my first day back gave me trouble. It was a graphic design project in Canva that urgently needed to be finished. Our COLA program is coming up in 2 weeks and we needed to change the color schemes and fonts of the student handbook to match our brand colors. I am like the last person to be doing this, I am so terrible with anything related to art or design. Though, I was able to figure out what I was doing and once I got the hang of it, I was cruising through. We had a few problems with how the colors turned out on a rough print so I had to go back and change some colors again but I’m blaming my colorblind boss on that one. I was just doing what I was instructed to do. I’m glad I got the opportunity to do this project. I’m not planning on going into any marketing or design specialty, but I’m thankful I got to at least learn a new skill and say I can somewhat use Canva now.

Tuesday was an extremely long day and was mainly centered on learning. I first got to participate in another NxGen program day. If you have been following the blog, the first NxGen was all focused on personal growth and the journey it takes. This second day was now all about how managers can help their employees go through their own personal growth journey and try to get better with their work. It was a really interesting experience to go through. I personally have never managed anyone, but I’m glad that I now understand how managers should support their staff and help them grow. Following the Nxgen program day, on Tuesday night, I participated in a training session at the Columbus Metropolitan Library for our upcoming COLA program. COLA is a week long leadership camp for high school students in Central Ohio. As a fellow for Leadership Columbus, this was one of my main roles for this summer. I will be helping facilitate and basically making sure the day runs smoothly. This is something I’m personally very excited for. I have been learning a lot about my own leadership this summer through my time with Leadership Columbus along with our training sessions at the Columbus Foundation. I am so ready to take what I’ve learned and inspire these high school students to build their own leadership strengths as well. Change starts with them and I, and I’ll stand by that statement.

The rest of the week wasn’t bad at all either. I spent most of the day yesterday doing some cleanup around our office as I waited for a flash drive to upload pictures from our 2 previous COLA programs. I can then go through the pictures and add them for my 50th Anniversary project that I’m working on. I didn’t realize how many pictures there were and it took the entire day so I tried to keep myself busy doing other things that weren’t virtual so I didn’t crash my computer. I ended up organizing closets and freeing up space in our tiny office because we have another intern starting next week. I cleaned them off a desk and got them set up with a space to work. I’m excited to for them to start so there can be another young student in the office with me.

That’s all I really have for you guys this week. Stay tuned for the next couple weeks as COLA is beginning and I will have a lot to share.

-Austin Gray