MBA student comes full circle with JrNYLC experience

It wasn’t a hard sell for Lyza Klein ’21. In fact, she went through Envision’s Junior National Young Leadership Conference herself as a teenager.

“This summer, from start to finish, taught me so much about myself and what leadership styles work best with mine,” said Klein, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in business administration management. “I got to see what different leadership styles look like when they work together. Also, I got to see what personalities work best with mine and how to create relationships with a lot of different kinds of people.”

She added, “Being able to see both sides of this (JrNYLC) program allowed me to scale how much I have grown over the last decade and have grown into the kind of leader I am. Bloomsburg has played a major role in my growth as well, but this summer allowed me to be even more confident and become someone who likes meeting new people and networking, while letting me get hands-on practice with different leadership styles.”

Klein spent two months this past summer in the Washington D.C. area working as a program office manager for JrNYLC, which provides middle school students the opportunity to experience the power of democracy among the monuments, be inspired by exemplary stories of courage, collaborate to discover solutions to some of the issues they face today, and spend a night in a museum among new friends.

“Working with Envision’s (JrNYLC) was something that meant a lot to me, because I completed the program in 2010 as a scholar,” Klein said. “Following graduation, I had a window of opportunity to do whatever I wanted, knowing that when I came back to Bloomsburg to start my MBA, I would have to begin thinking about my long-term career. Accepting a position with Envision meant I was able to see the administrative side of the program, and I now have experience as both a scholar and an employee.”

According Klein, some of her key responsibilities this summer were:

• scholar accountability and assistance
• oversee travel of the more than 200 scholars arriving each week from across the country
• creating room check reports for the week
• creating departure travel and airport staff manifests to track scholars getting home safely
• manage paperwork and medicine collection
• manage the 24/7 office phone and answer calls from scholars and their families

“Interacting with scholars and their families led me to learn about case management and record-keeping of interactions (we) would have with families,” Klein said. “As an (Bloomsburg) undergraduate, I was highly involved in organizations and clubs in different executive positions. I believe the experience from those roles helped me this summer, because I had experience working with a team to achieve a shared goal."

Klein said her JrNYLC summer experience prepared her well for her graduate assistantship for the Presidential Leadership Program (PLP) in the president’s office.

“Beyond personal growth, I learned how to manage tasks in the workforce and got the first-hand experience of working with tight deadlines, different personalities and ensuring that my work is acceptable,” Klein said. “I’ll bring the high-level effort and work ethic I worked on and polished all summer to my projects and classwork this school year.”

Although her perspective is as a business student, Klein sees great value in Envision’s JrNYLC for any college major or graduate program.

“Whether you’re an education major and want to be an advisor for a program or are in a different major and want to be in the program office, it’s rewarding either way,” Klein said. “Getting to be a small part of scholars’ lives is worth it all by the end of the summer. This is a role where you’ll grow and learn a lot quickly. It’s an experience where you’ll learn a lot about yourself and your own leadership skills.”