College of Professional Studies Center for Leadership Studies

I am Salisha Allard-Blaisdell, I am from the eastern Caribbean, it's an island called Grenada. I'm currently enrolled in the PhD program Organizational Leadership, which is housed in the Center for Leadership Studies. I grew up in the eastern Caribbean. I was born into very, you know, dire poverty. My birth mother—she passed away when I was nine years old and I was placed in an orphanage during the last couple days and even months after her death. So while I was in the orphanage, I remember just not being treated very nicely. And I thought to myself how important it is for, you know, the people in the orphanage to recognize the value of taking care of children who are orphaned or neglected so that, you know, had me thinking like, oh, my goodness, how can I, you know, make a difference in terms of helping people to manage an organization and an organization effectively. It was in 2019, spring of 2019. I was looking for a doctoral program. I recall meeting an individual who is a professor here at Northwest. She's actually now the dean of the business school. And I looked, I found the school and I started researching and I saw that there was a doctoral program. My goal was always to pursue a PhD because I'm so interested in research and researching, you know, the youth population.

So when I looked there and I found that the school was opened like it had a doctoral program, I immediately reached out. I came into this program not really knowing, you know, not what to expect, but I really wasn't expecting the quality of the content in terms of the material and the course and the level of drive or concern that my faculty mentors have for me. It's just amazing. So the most formative thing for me was just the perfect blend between content, like course content, and the support that I received from a number of faculty mentors here. I am particularly very fond of the strong integration of faith within our curriculum as well as the practice. So we don't just study leadership theories like we learn so many leadership theories, but we are also using those theories to make changes in our organization—like today. You realize that a leader is more than someone is more than someone telling another person what to do. Instead, a leader is someone showing a person what to do. Like you're motivating them. You are—you're exemplifying that the skills and the talents and the behaviors that you want the people around you to follow my professors, they are living leadership like they are literally like leadership legends in terms of their approach to our studies and our growth in the course work as well as I don't know how much pride they put in us and how much they really believe in us.

This doctoral program, it's challenging, but it's also very doable. It's something that you can do even though it's going to push you to your limits. You are able to work with faculty and work with the cohort. You're able to work with them and figure out how can you manage your schedule. So if you're interested in a program, I think you should not hesitate, you know, just find out more. This program provides you with such great content, but you just not just learning it to pass the course. You're actually integrating it and utilizing it for your organization, even in your personal lives. I cannot even tell you how much some of my coursework has transformed me as an individual, giving me more confidence in myself. I mean, sometimes the work knocks you down. You think, you know, OK, I think I got this and then you realize, nope, you don't got this. Go back to the drawing board and come back again. You are going to encounter those moments, but there is so much support here that you're just never going to be alone.