Stanford Arena Floor Renamed

Student Profile

The Making of a Leader

Spend a few minutes with Gabriella Siegfried ’19, and you will quickly understand why her fellow students have elected her as student body president. Gabby is the sort of young woman whose intelligence and confidence blow into the room like a force of nature, and it’s clear that whatever she does, at MHU or elsewhere, she will create waves. Her goals for her life are not modest ones. She wants to be at peace with herself, and to change the world. Such goals might sound trite in other contexts, but Gabby has clear ideas about how she wants to go about effecting change and exactly what corner of the world she’d like to influence.

by Teresa Buckner “In an abstract sense, my goal is to have peace with myself and be able to self-reflect and not ever be too proud to do that,” she said. “One of my goals also is to hopefully work at a grass roots level doing political activism and changing the world from a place where I can see the injustice and hopefully fix it, or at least make steps to fix it.” Gabby said she has good role models, in a paternal grandmother who has been politically active in the Orlando area all her life, and two older sisters who have influenced her. One works for the Department of Children and Families in Orlando. The other sister has worked for international relations and

Gabby often represents the student body in meetings with university administration. Here, she talks with Provost John Omachonu.

non-governmental organizations in Senegal, Haiti, Nepal, and now in Cambodia. “So, she’s worked all over the world doing the grass roots work that I wish I could do,” Gabby said. “My two sisters are definitely doing the good in the world and have influenced me in that way.” In particular, Gabby would like to work with displaced people and refugees in Latin America. That’s why one of her majors is Spanish. Her other major is political science, and she is minoring in international studies. In addition to Spanish, Gabby would eventually like to speak French fluently. This is because she actually holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and in France. Gabby grew up in Winter Park, Florida. But while her father’s family lives primarily in Florida, her mother’s family is from Guadalupe, an island in the West Indies. Since citizens of Guadalupe and their children are citizens of France, Gabby qualifies.

When it came to choosing a college, Gabby said she wanted a small, liberal arts school where she could play soccer (she starts at center back, a defensive position). Mars Hill made the short list, and then, she said, conversations with Tom Gott (who was then soccer coach) and political science department chair Heather Hawn sold it for her. In addition to soccer, Gabby said she wanted to be active in Student Government Association from day one at MHU. “I said to myself before I came to Mars Hill, ‘if I’m going to go to such a small school, I really want to be a big fish in a small pond, and I really want to have a voice on campus, and hopefully have a leadership role.’” In her first two years at MHU, she has served as freshman class president and then sophomore class president. She began her junior year as student body secretary, but when an internship prompted senior Kyler Kee to step down from the president’s seat, Gabby ran for it, and won. Gabby is currently working with administrators and other staff to make service in SGA a more professional experience for students. She said she wants students to be proud of their SGA and realize what a privilege it is to serve in this capacity. She plans to work over the summer to plan leadership development classes for SGA members. She also plans to help coordinate a retreat for SGA members when they return after summer break. Gabby is on track to graduate early, in December 2019. She feels she has a lot to accomplish with respect to SGA, so that when she graduates, the new president will have the tools to keep moving the organization in a more professional direction. “I’m excited. I feel that this is really going to be a year that we take off and set a pace for SGA in the future,” she said.