Know Thy Power & Use it!!!
Mekdes Dessie, Yenenesh Hailu and Yirefu Tefera
Assistant professorship
A hefty congratulations goes to three powerful women lecturers at Wolkite University: Mekdes Dessie, Yenenesh Hailu and Yirefu Tefera on their promotion to assistant professorship. What makes this promotion grand is Wolkite University in its history promoted for the first time women lecturers (five of them) to the next tier of the academia status. These three women also belong to the international formidable organization, R-Ladies. R-LADIES Global is a worldwide organization whose mission is to promote gender diversity in the R community—coders, researchers, programmers.
R-Ladies’ primary focus is on supporting minority gender R enthusiasts to achieve their programming potential, by building a collaborative global network of R leaders, mentors, learners, and developers to facilitate individual and collective progress worldwide.
These three women credit their success to the leadership training organized by R-Ladies for the board members. The training inspired and helped them to: identify & develop their unique qualities, identify their weaknesses & opportunities available within their communities and present their ideas with confidence and assuredness. The program also supported them to work on their weaknesses–mostly the awareness to trust their abilities and capabilities, to pursue all opportunities identified in their own institution, to enhance their engagements in research and community service projects, to have the drive to publish research articles on reputable journals, to participate at different international conferences and present their papers. As a result, they applied and won university leadership positions by preparing and presenting sound strategic plan for the positions. Additionally, proposing different training programs, organizing events that uplift and encourage others by sharing their experiences and success stories catapulted them for the candidacy.
They prepared, they maximized their learnings, they developed the ambition and drive to reach their zenith and, yes, they arrived!
The assistant professors extend their earnest appreciation and indebtedness to the R-Ladies Addis Ababa Chapter, GIZ and Ms. Margareth Gfrerer, project lead and to Nahu Senay Girma for designing, developing and facilitating the leadership training programs over fourth months.
Godspeed!
The AWiB Team
