Bonfire Leadership Development: The Beginning
I'm a thirty-something woman, who has spent the last 5+ years in the Midwest after a lifetime in India. I like to joke that I have the most international-local job among everyone I know. I work for the school district in Chicago; went to grad school for International Development in Minnesota; worked in Corporate Citizenship at KPMG in India for many years; studied Economics in undergrad; learned German and forgot most of it; and lived all over India since my father was in the Army. I could have never predicted the path my personal and professional lives would take, and what cuts through all of these life experiences for me is how different they are. Some of us are born knowing who we want to be, and I do not belong to that group. One commonality that cuts through all of my life is that I am always trying to problem solve what is in front of me while learning new things in some way, shape or form.
The last fellowship cohort based program I participated in was as an Education Pioneers' Summer Fellow, way back in 2015. I'll write another day about how life changing that experience eventually was. I learned about Bonfire in 2019 through a colleague who was participating in the program. I was vaguely intrigued, in the way one is, when you hear something interesting but don't know the specifics.
Cut to 2020, when I had been feeling the need for more than just expanding my skill set. Bonfire is an employer-sponsored program for women (we are cohort 2, so it is also in it's infancy), and so your application/selection process may look very different than mine. Once I knew that I was in the program, there was a little bit of lull, and then the following happened: an introductory conversation with one of the staff to help them identify small groups (more on that later); and LOTS of calendar invites. In my next post, I'll talk about what the first session was like. One thing to know is that this is a new program, having started in 2019, and having a first cohort which was in-person, and has pivoted to being online completely because...pandemic.