By Sabrina Leeds
Over the course of the past year, I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel around the world, to 14 different countries and four different continents, while studying abroad.
I began my journey abroad in incredible Cape Town, South Africa, where I studied Management Consulting with iXperience, a Global Professional Development Certificate Program, which I was drawn to by its unique combination of adventure and academia. My two months with iXperience were just as much about exploring Cape Town as they were about exploring the world of Management Consulting. Not only was I working to develop valuable technical skills including, but certainly not limited to, accurate market sizing, multifaceted research, and advanced data analysis, as well as the cohesive presentation and communication of information, but I also had the opportunity to explore the complex Capetonian cuisine, to go hiking, paragliding, skydiving, bungee jumping, and shark cage diving, all while building strong and lasting relationships both with my fellow students and with the Cape Town community.
One evening, I sat in the lobby of the hostel where all iXperience students lived during their time with the program, wearing my favorite, cozy sweatshirt, which just happens to have the letters of Alpha Kappa Psi on it. Plugged in and glued to my screen, preparing for a presentation, I was completely immersed in my work.
“Hey Brother!”
I looked up from my laptop and took out my headphones.
“I’m in AKPsi too!”
As we sat there, discussing the similarities and differences between the rush and pledging processes of our two chapters, several of our fellow students, overhearing our conversation, pulled up chairs, and before I knew it, I found myself surrounded by a group of my brothers from around the world.
After my summer in Cape Town came to an end, I flew to London, England, and then to Hamburg, Germany, to embark on a four-month-long voyage with Semester at Sea to study Global Business Ethics, Environmental Politics, and the Environmental History of Food, to strengthen my German, Italian, and Spanish language skills, and to work to develop cultural competence, as well as skills with which to address issues of intercultural communication, individual and cultural identity, empathy, and ambiguity in the context of globalization, all while traveling via ship to 12 different countries around the world. I was drawn to this study abroad program for the same reasons why I was drawn to iXperience, and again, whenever I wore my letters or made my membership known in some other way, I found my brothers. As I traveled around the world, I found brothers from Michigan to Morocco, Boston to Brazil, San Diego to Senegal, and Athens to the middle of the Atlantic.
At Tulane University, Alpha Kappa Psi is my community, my family, and the members of the Pi Chi Chapter are my brothers, my people. As I traveled around the world, I discovered that this organization is much more than that. As the world’s oldest and largest professional business fraternity, it is also a global community and an international brotherhood of unique, ambitious, talented, and supportive individuals from diverse backgrounds with a wide variety of interests and goals, but with the same values, namely brotherhood, knowledge, integrity, service, and unity. But most of all, it is a brotherhood that I am blessed to be a part of.
About the Author
Sabrina Leeds is a rising senior at Tulane University from Los Angeles, California, double majoring in Political Economy and Philosophy with a minor in Management. She has been a member of the Pi Chi Chapter for five semesters and has held the positions of Alumni Chair on the Officer Board as well as Master of Rituals on the Executive Committee. Sabrina hopes to travel to all 50 states, all seven continents, and all 196 countries around the world (she has three continents, 32 states, and 176 countries to go). In addition to international travel, she enjoys practicing art and photography, learning about food history, and engaging in extreme sports, including equestrianism, bungee jumping, and skydiving.
