Kendal Hicks joined the Learning by Leading™ program in 2017 and served as the co-coordinator of the new Waterway Stewardship Internship. Along with her mentor, Nina Suzuki, and fellow co-coordinator Tiffani To, Kendal developed the internship from scratch, creating curriculum, hiring interns and naming the internship! Kendal led her team with incredible success for a year, managing projects including new plantings along the renovated Arboretum Waterway as well as the floating island of wetland plants. Kendal shared that in her year with the program, she was “encouraged to go beyond my comfort zone, and I achieved more than I thought was possible.”

Since graduating in June 2018, Kendal has been working as an Environmental Planner at ICF in Sacramento. She connected with their staff at an Arboretum and Public Garden event and was eager to join their team. Reflecting on her time in the program, Kendal shared, “I knew that I possessed leadership skills, but I could not predict the growth that I would experience as a leader with the internship. I realized that I could be a leader and that leading does not always come from big ideas, but also from small, everyday actions.”

Kendal’s contributions have not only made a lasting impact on her interns, our visitors, the Arboretum and Public Garden and UC Davis. She is taking the leadership and planning skills she gained in the Learning by Leading™ program to her career, in which she is making a lasting impact on the broader community.