My interactions within the YMCA facility have been nothing short of fulfilling. I have had the opportunity to meet the YMCA Board Members and connect with Pharrell Williams’ YellowHab Micro-School. During my interactions at the board meetings I was able to connect with a group of directors that have embraced their roles as leaders and provide me with the necessary insight on what it takes to be a leader as well as the importance of creating a strong community. I feel as if my interactions with the board members allowed me to challenge myself and discover more about my strengths and weaknesses and how I will be applying them to my future role as a leader. While in the presence of the board members I was reminded how important it is to keep the strategies and visions aligned with the overall mission of any facility. I witnessed the board members commit to strategizing effective plans to ensure that they are reaching out to the community and it was an honor to be included in that process. I have also had the pleasure of teaming up with an excellent group of interns this semester that have various educational backgrounds such as public health and exercise science majors. I collaborated with another ODU student with a background in public health and created a healthy promotion seminar for the students at the YelloHab Micro-School. With my educational background in health administration, I applied my skill set of operational planning and problem solving to the overall project and we created an effective learning program that the students really enjoyed participating in. ‘Wellness Wednesdays,’ are split amongst 5 sections and we presented a new segment to the students bi weekly. We wanted to promote a healthier lifestyle to students by discussing what we found were huge problem areas in our community such as chronic illness, sleep and mental health, physical activity, healthy eating, and a unit on healthy teeth. I learned a lot and enjoyed working with those students. I also learned important aspects of my planning ability that encouraged me to think more critically and to become more aware of my limits. I also learned more about what it takes to be an effective team member and how everyone’s impact truly matters. word count; 378