Alumna & COO Iskander gives leadership advice

By Ellen Liu     12/2/10 6:00pm

What can a sociology major taking 12 hours each semester do when she graduates? If her name is Maryana Iskander (Wiess '97), she can rack up a long list of scholarships and take on a series of influential leadership roles, including working with federal judges, advising President David Leebron and acting as chief operating officer of Planned Parenthood. Iskander visited campus Nov. 18 to discuss the role leadership has played in her life and the importance of education. Students, staff and faculty members attended her presentation in Herring Hall, which was sponsored by Leadership Rice and the Program for the Study of Leadership.

During her time at Rice, Iskander became the first sophomore to be elected Student Association president, serving for two terms. In addition, she was chosen as a William Marsh Rice Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar and awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship for public service.

Upon completing her undergraduate education, Iskander attended Yale Law School and Oxford University.

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Iskander said individuals who want to be great leaders have to be committed to getting feedback from people around them in order to know when they should be doing things differently.

"It's really the courageous leaders who say, 'I want to make sure that I'm holding up a mirror and asking other people to help me,'" Iskander said.

Iskander said writing a personal mission statement made gathering feedback much easier for her.

She said that organizations have mission statements for reasons ranging from accountability to clear goal-setting and encouraged the audience to create their own mission statements for the same purposes.

"It's really important for you to be accountable to yourself and to people in your life," Iskander said, "You must have a good sense of what your own core values are and what things are important to you."

Iskander also discussed the idea of having a personal board of directors review the mission statement and present criticism.

She said she began implementing this idea four years ago and that the board's presence has compelled her to seriously contemplate each year whether she has been following her goals.

"You have to do something that really puts you out there in terms of saying 'How can I invite people to come into my life and give me feedback and do it in a way that's structured and in a way that really forces me to think about what decisions I'm making?'," Iskander said.

In addition, Iskander told the audience members to pick a few activities and be invested in those rather than spreading themselves thin to be mediocre at many things.

"I know that [choosing just a few activities] can be hard for Rice students because they want to do everything, but [focusing] really worked for me," Iskander said. "For most of my time here, I took 12 hours every semester, got really good grades and had time to do other things really well, which helped when it came time to apply for scholarships and other things."

Iskander said she graduated with one major, sociology, despite having taken many pre-medicine courses.

"When I interview people and they tell me they had three majors, it's a little bit of a turn off," Iskander said. "You can take classes in things that are interesting to you, but you don't have to major."

Duncan College junior Farrah Madanay attended the presentation and commented on Iskander's emphasis of focusing on only a few activities. She said she felt the general trend at Rice was the more the better, both regarding more hours and more majors.

"It's almost a relief to see a former academ who took the minimal required hours per semester to have such great success after graduating from Rice," Madanay said.

Madanay said many students feel compelled to be jacks of all trades and involve themselves in too many clubs, teams and classes.

"We often aren't aware of the 'master of none' clause of that adage," Madanay said.

Iskander said she didn't want to live by checking off a list of achievements that need to be attained because she believed that time and energy were precious things to waste.

Furthermore, she told the audience members - mainly the students - to take advantage of their years at Rice by stepping out of their comfort zones.

"One of the most important things that you can do while you're here is take really big risks," Iskander said. "Right now, you guys are perfectly situated to take a lot of risks with no cost."

Iskander told the audience to consider the worst case scenario for every risk and said that for the most part, risks were worth taking if they've been thought through first.

"You are at an elite institution and have most things provided for you," Iskander said, "If you fall, how far are you really going to fall?"

She then talked about the time she spent doing a federal clerkship for a judge. She had wanted to work with a progressive, female judge and had made a list of prospective candidates, while her fellow law school students sent applications to all the judges they could. Iskander said she was able to get a clerkship more easily because she actually knew why she wanted to apply to each judge that she had chosen. According to Iskander, applying for scholarships involved a similar approach.

"You actually can win things more easily if you've been really thoughtful about what the path is that got you there and be able to explain why you're applying," Iskander said.

Additionally, Iskander told the audience members to think about not just what they wanted to do but also who they wanted to work with. She used the jobs she held at the end of her clerkship as an example.

"At the time, there was an unknown candidate running for the Senate seat in Illinois named Barack Obama," Iskander said, "So I went to this party at a house and there was [Obama] and I thought, 'Oh my God, he's really impressive.'"

She considered working for Obama's campaign but then learned that Leebron had been named Rice's new president and decided to connect with him.

"I sent him an e-mail with a bit of my background," Iskander said. "I didn't ask for a job. I just said, 'Is there anything I could do to help you as you transition to Rice?'"

Shortly afterward, Iskander began working as an adviser to Leebron, and she said she approached the job with the aim of being as helpful to others as possible. According to Iskander, this attitude also helped her begin working at Planned Parenthood in 2007.

"It's amazing how much you can get done by just trying to make yourself useful to other people," Iskander said. "People are very happy to help you advance if they see that you want to help them."

Iskander concluded her speech by telling audience members to do what makes them happy.

"Happiness is more important than success," Iskander said. "Success and happiness don't have to be mutually exclusive, but you should stop yourself at points when you're not happy to see what you changes you can make."

Director of Leadership Rice Judy Le helped bring Iskander to speak at Rice and mentioned that she also supported what Iskander said about being superior at a few things rather than average at many.

"I work with many students who seem like they have their hand in everything but aren't all that effective at making positive contributions to any one thing," Le said. "Maryana makes significant positive change in most everything she commits to, but she is very intentional about what those commitments are."

Le also agreed with Iskander's statement that Rice students, coming from an elite university, are obligated to take risks because they can. She said leadership involves taking risks, putting yourself out there and being vulnerable to failure. Le added that Iskander's leadership does not lie in the title she holds but rather in her effectiveness in making those organizations better.

"She is also authentic in how she approaches leadership; her decisions are based on values and not on a checklist of accomplishments," Le said.

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