Allyson Rothrock, Class of 2012

Allyson Rothrock
President, The Harvest Foundation
Martinsville, VA

How has your Lead Virginia experience influenced or shaped you as a leader?

It has broadened my understanding of what goes on across the Commonwealth. Prior to this experience, I was only focused on my community and the broader experience I got from Lead Virginia helped me look across all views of the Commonwealth. The biggest thing that has changed for me since Lead Virginia is my understanding of how others are dealing with issues in their communities, and then applying those ideas to my community and sharing my ideas to those working across the Commonwealth.

What is new and exciting with you now or since your time with Lead Virginia?
My understanding of the importance of thinking statewide rather than community-based has changed since my experience with Lead Virginia. I think that serious issues across the Commonwealth need to be looked at on a much broader scale. We all have problems but looking at them statewide helps us fix things in our communities and across the state. 

Since Lead Virginia, how have you put your social capital to work?
On a daily basis, I reach out to a people that I have formed relationships with from Lead Virginia across the Commonwealth. I now have contacts I would have not had if I had not gone through the Lead Virginia program. I am not afraid to reach out to those people to figure out what needs to be done in my community. I use their ideas and experiences from their communities and apply them as ways to make a positive impact on my community; ways that I would never thought of before without their input. I almost parallel my Lead Virginia experience with the importance of travel in a young person’s life, especially to places where knowledge is being shared. I would take my own children on trips to understand how others across the country and in other countries live. The education that came out of seeing how other cultures live within their communities is an experience that you would not get in any school. It’s that exposure that helps mold change and helps garner the understanding of the lives of others around the world and in other communities.

What is something that Lead Virginia inspired you to do that you were not doing before your class year?
Lead Virginia helped me gain the ability to look at our Commonwealth as one important entity instead of several different communities. Prior to my class year, I believed that Northern Virginia was a completely different state and could not have shared any of the same issues and complications facing my community. I learned that I was wrong in thinking that way. After the program, I realized we share a lot of the same issues; such as skilled labor, which every community is facing and thinking about how they can obtain the skilled labor needed for new and growing jobs. It was an amazing eye opening experience for me to see how we are all dealing with this issue on several different scales. Lead Virginia allowed for me to see that we all have something to share with each other.

What did you expect from Lead Virginia going in? Did the program exceed your expectations and broaden your horizons?
Going into it, I thought the experience would give me a better understanding of the organization itself and a better understanding of the true mission of Lead Virginia. The program did give me a better understanding of that, but most of all, I came away with a better understanding of the state I was born and raised in. I learned about a number of programs across the Commonwealth that I would have never have known about without this experience. I met people that I would never have met who have expertise in areas I have no expertise in. So, now I can call on them and ask for help on projects that I am conducting in my own community. The program all in all exceeded my exceptions and went far beyond what I thought it could be.