If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
-John Quincy Adams
For years after I attended the HOBY World Leadership Congress as an ambassador, I often had trouble just thinking about the experience I'd had for those nine days in Washington, D.C., because the memories were so good and so potent that it hurt to know that I could never go back, and that at some point, even those memories would start to fade.
But last year, I had the opportunity to go back to WLC for the first time as a staff member. And though it won't ever be the same experience as it was for me in 2001, what I realized last July and again last week is that WLC, just like HOBY on the state level, is in so many ways an even better experience, a more enriching, more life-changing, more self-revealing experience as a staff member than it was as an ambassador.
This year particularly, I arrived in D.C. to almost 100 familiar, smiling faces who I'd missed so much since last seeing them one year prior. I knew I'd get to build amazing bonds with my ambassadors, meet kids from all over the globe and laugh until my sides ached with old friends and new friends. And at the end of it all I'd have inevitably learned something, about myself, about others, about what I want out of life and out of my relationship with one of the most defining factors in it to date: HOBY. And this year, I did just that -- I decided that eventually I'd like to be running the WLC show, the HOBY Mama as it were. (Or, if we're in for changing titles, the HOBY Head Shanequa. Long story. Ask in person.) It'll be a few years (decades?), but it's on. And I can't wait.
Til then, I will count down the days to WLC every single year, no matter where my travels take me -- mostly because of these people.
Me and Mayor Harry, my section leader two years running! 
Amazing Section G facilitators -- Simon, me, Tyler and Kadi.
Oooh, ooh hey. Hey girl. Hey girl, hey. Russ and I breaking it down.
All of Section G!
Me and the Section G boys
Uh uh, girl. Shanequa LaTrise Jones and her sisters, Tarqueeta Patron Jones and Chiquita Banana Jones.
Having our final section gathering after the ambassadors went home on Saturday.
I say it every year to new ambassadors each time -- this program is so important to who I am. I don't know who I'd be without it, and without each of you.
HOBY hugs,
HRH e. cawein
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