By Katelyn Amendolara-Russo
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – In 2010, during my Fulbright-Hays study abroad, I found myself standing in the middle of a remote animal reserve in the Mpumalanga region of South Africa, surrounded by elephants and giraffes, with rhinos roaming freely across the land. There was no running water. I slept in a small dirt hut, far removed from paved roads, cell service, or anything resembling the infrastructure I knew back home.
In that moment, I understood clearly that I was no longer in Youngstown – or anywhere close to it. That realization was both unsettling and clarifying.
Each morning, the landscape reminded me of my place within it. Wildlife moved without fences or warning. Life did not operate on human schedules. Survival depended on awareness, respect and adaptability. It was a stark contrast to the environments where most of us live and work – spaces designed for efficiency, convenience, and control. But it was precisely this remoteness that made the experience transformative.
We were there to study the Zulu and Ndebele tribes – communities rich in tradition, collective identity, and cultural resilience, yet often lacking access to formal education and information about their rights within a democratic system.
To study democracy in a region where many people had limited exposure to governmental structures challenged my assumptions about civic participation, power and privilege. Democracy, I learned, is not a universal experience. It is shaped by access – access to education, to information, to opportunity.
For communities long excluded from these systems, participation looked different. Voice looked different. And leadership looked different.
This was the essence of making the unfamiliar familiar. It required letting go of the belief that my understanding of governance, leadership or progress was the default. Instead, I had to listen – to lived experience, to history, and to context.
That lesson deepened as we traveled through Swaziland, a small country where power and hierarchy are expressed in physical form. There, respect for the king is shown through height. If the king is shorter than the average man, you squat to meet his stature. Authority is not asserted upward – it is met downward.
Power is acknowledged through humility. That single gesture reshaped how I think about leadership.
Back home, leadership is often associated with elevation – titles, platforms, visibility. But in Swaziland, respect was communicated through an intentional lowering of self. That inversion stayed with me. It challenged the idea that leadership requires dominance.
Instead, it suggested that leadership, at its best, is about meeting people where they are. The experience continued to widen my perspective as we studied the last populations of the Bushmen civilization. Standing before ancient cave paintings – stories etched into stone thousands of years ago – I understood that legacy does not require permanence of structure. These communities, whose ways of life have largely disappeared, left behind meaning through storytelling, symbolism, and shared memory.
Later, while surrounded by lions in the Bongoni Mountains, that realization became visceral. Nature does not bend to human systems. It humbles them. And it reminds you how small – and interconnected – we truly are. That sense of humility followed me home.
As an educator, I carried these lessons into the classroom. Teaching students from diverse backgrounds reinforced what I had witnessed abroad: learning happens when people feel respected, not managed. When curiosity replaces certainty. When difference is treated as a resource, not a disruption. Those same lessons became critical when I stepped into leadership at a museum with a storied past.
Much like the communities I encountered in South Africa, institutions carry history – pride, memory and sometimes resistance to change. Leadership in those spaces is not about imposing vision; it is about understanding context.
In Youngstown, this resonates deeply. Our region is built on legacy industries – manufacturing, healthcare, education, family-owned businesses – that have weathered profound change.
Leaders here are often stewards, balancing tradition with innovation, honoring what came before while preparing for what comes next. That requires the same adaptability I practiced in remote regions halfway across the world.
South Africa taught me that control is an illusion. Whether navigating wildlife reserves or organizational change, success depends on awareness, respect and the ability to adapt. Progress is not accelerated by force – it is sustained through trust. For business leaders across the Mahoning Valley, these lessons matter.
In an economy shaped by workforce shifts, technological change, and evolving community expectations, the ability to listen, to engage difference and to lead with humility is a competitive advantage.
The most enduring realization from that Fulbright-Hays experience was this: privilege often hides in plain sight. Access to clean water. Education. Safety. Opportunity. These are not universal. Recognizing that reality reframed my understanding of responsibility – not just personally, but professionally.
Leadership, I learned, is not about how much authority you hold, but how intentionally you use it. It is about lowering yourself when necessary, inviting others in and recognizing the impact your decisions have on those with fewer resources or fewer voices.
Making the unfamiliar familiar is not a single trip or moment. It is a practice – one that continues to shape how I lead, how I listen, and how I contribute to the shared future of this region. Sometimes, the lessons learned in the most remote corners of the world turn out to be the ones we need most at home.
