Age: 19
Gender: Female
Home country: Monrovia, Liberia
Activities: Student-run business, house captain

Cornelia won the ALA Leadership Award for first year students and has dreams of using her passion for law to affect meaningful change in Liberia.

Cornelia’s Dream:

A leader is someone who combines their personality, skills and talents with their passion to undertake a task with purpose that will impact the greater community. By this definition, I consider myself to be a leader.

My passion lies in impacting the lives of people and creating unique solutions for particular problems. I was in grade seven when I discovered this passion. My school had a problem where the delinquency of student was affecting their academic performance. Along with three of my peers, I founded an academic club on campus where the top students conducted tutorials for those who were struggling with specific subjects.

Since then, I have been passionate about driving new and innovative solution to problems I find around me. In my recent summer break back in Liberia I founded an organization called iMake A Change along with eight other local Liberian youths. iMake a Change is a youth-led initiative based on the “each one reach one, each one teach one” approach and seeks to promote in-school youth discussions and encourages young people to come up with targets and solutions to problems in their communities.

In the future, I intend to continue with my first major project which is the revamping of the economic community of West African states with the help of my fellow African Leadership Academy students.