70. Danielle Simko with 'Lead with Light' and Teaching Others to Become Effective Leaders Through Service

Danielle Simko graduated from high school this last May and along with everything else that you can imagine a busy senior doing, she also competed in her local city’s pageant with the Miss America organization.

On this episode Danielle shares about the community service initiative she started called ‘Lead with Light’. Her goal with it is to teach different areas of leadership to children and youth, giving an especial focus on service and helping those around you. I love how we were able to discuss the ways that service can help you naturally build leadership skills.

Danielle also takes some time to talk about what competing in one of these pageants is like and emphasizes that for everyone involved, at the heart of it all is service and giving back to their communities.

Links mentioned in the show:
Lead with Light Instagram
Miss America organization
Just Serve

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Transcript

Melissa: Danielle Simcoe graduated from high school this last May, and along with everything else that you can imagine a busy senior doing, she also competed in her local city's pageant with the Miss America organization. On this episode, Danielle shares about the community service initiative she started called Lead with Light. Her goal with it is to teach different areas of leadership to children and youth, giving in a special focus on service and helping those around you. I love how we were able to discuss the ways that service can help anyone naturally build leadership skills. Danielle also takes some time to talk about what competing in one of these pageants is like and emphasizes that for everyone involved, at the heart of it all is service and giving back to their communities.

Melissa: Welcome to the do something more podcast, a service oriented show where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more. I'm your host, Melissa Draper. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am super excited today to be talking to Danielle Simcoe, who has an initiative that she does called Lead with Light. And I found her instagram account, and I loved all of the good things that she was doing on there. Basically, her mission is to inspire others to develop leadership skills with service at the heart. And I love that idea because I think that is something anyone could benefit from in any area of their life. So, Danielle, I'm just so excited to talk about this. Welcome to the podcast.

Danielle: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Melissa: Why don't you just start off by giving us a little introduction of yourself?

Danielle: Yeah. So I'm Danielle, and I'm the youngest of seven kids in my family. I just graduated from high school this past May, and I've done just a lot of things there. At high school. I've done student council, dance company, drill, just kind of everything. And my family's very musical, so I've just been kind of doing that. And then I'm going to ensign college this fall to study interior design. So super excited for that.

Melissa: Super exciting. And I am near the younger end of a big family as well. So whenever I hear that, I'm like, ooh, a kindred spirit. I get that. So tell us a little bit about the background with lead with light. How did that all get started? What kind of prompted you to start that initiative?

Danielle: Yeah, so back in April, I decided to do a pageant. It was kind of my mom's idea, and she was like, it's going to be just a good learning experience. You're going to develop professional skills, and you'll be able to get better in being in interviews, and it would just be a good idea to boost your confidence and be able to have better stage presence. And so I was like, sure, I'll do a pageant, even though it's totally not my thing at all. And with pageant and the Miss America organization, they have each girl come up with a community service initiative, and it's anything that they really want. It's anything that they really care about. And then they want to create an initiative or platform around. And so I kind of struggled to, like, think of one. I couldn't think of one for, like, so many weeks. And originally I was going to have my platform be around preventing eating disorders and having comfortable relationship with your body. But as time went on, I really wanted to involve service more in it because it's a community service initiative, and it's so much easier to do service projects that you can talk about in your interview with the judges. And so I was trying to think of ways that service is specific to me and how service has influenced my life, something that's been a theme throughout my entire life, or I guess just the last kind of six years of my life. Starting in junior high, it's been leadership. And so I did student council for four years. I was an officer on my dance company, and it's kind of just a theme that's followed me throughout my life. And I was on staff for leadership camp for four years as well. And so I wanted to shape it around leadership because I've learned so many good lessons through the leadership opportunities I've had. And again, at that leadership camp, I wanted to find a way to share those lessons with others. And the best way to do that was through service in my eyes. So that's why I community this created this initiative, is to kind of build my dream of that.

Melissa: I love that. And, yeah, I have two kids in high school right now. My oldest is a senior. And I think that's something we don't always talk about. When you're getting those leadership opportunities or you're doing them with school, sometimes people think, oh, yeah, she's just part of the dance team, but there's so much time and energy and passion and effort. Totally serving in that way.

Danielle: Yeah, for sure.

Melissa: Well, along with that, you kind of came up with three areas that you like to teach these leadership skills. What are some of those areas? Maybe especially the ones that have to do a service, and how do you go about teaching those?

Danielle: Yeah, so a large part of my initiative was just getting out and doing activities and putting together actual things that I could talk about. And so I went into schools like student councils and the high school's hope squad and the Kindness club, and I taught them just a short 15 minutes lesson. And then after the 15 minutes lesson, we would do a little service project. So in one of the classrooms I went to, we wrote cards to people in assisted living. And so in my lesson, I talked about six different aspects of my initiative. And basically they are the leadership skills that I wanted to really focus on, the ones that were most impactful for my life and what I've learned from every single leadership opportunity I've had. And so the six areas are active listening, building up others, valuing others, leading by example, authenticity, and serving others. Of course, that kind of scopes the whole thing, but those are the six areas that I was able to teach. And some of the classrooms I went into were like junior high, and I did some elementary school classrooms, too. And so I had to find a way to make it more engaging for them because my target audience is really youth because I can relate with them. I brought in objects for each little aspect. So, like, for example, for building up others, I had a little bucket, and I said, everyone has a little bucket, and you have to fill it every day with compliments or service, or I listening to them or helping them. And then for serving others, I brought in a little necklace chain, and I said, serving others connects you with people, and it's a way that you can really get to know someone is by serving them. So that was one of the ways I kind of had to make it interesting and engaging for them.

Melissa: And I love how you've simplified those different core areas because those are things anyone can work on in an easy way, from kids to adults, even though kids and youth are kind of your focus. So, yeah. Have you had any specific stories or experiences as you've gone about either teaching these initiatives or. I've seen you've also sponsored and done some different service projects with your initiative. What are some of the one on one experiences you've had?

Danielle: There was one really unique one that happened kind of when I first started it, but the kindness club at my high school invited me to go with them. The kindness club, they go around to elementary schools and they teach them a little lesson about kindness. And so they have enough people that they can send each person to one classroom that day. And it's literally just a 1520 minutes lesson. We show them a cute video, and it's like I was teaching this fifth grade class and I went in, and after I finished my lesson just about kindness and, like, our kindness club, I was walking out of the classroom, and this cute little girl, like, came up to me and she handed me this little sticky note, and she drew, like, a picture of a ladybug on it. And it was just the most simple, but, like, kind thing, and she gave it to me. And so that was one of the ways that I kind of saw not just, like, kindness, but also I kind of tied it into my initiative of she saw a way that she could serve just with her talent of drawing, and she was able to take the lead in that way and show her kindness and, like, love and support for me in that way. And I thought that was so cute, and I thought that's so simple. I think adults should do that, and I think teens should do that. Just every day find something that they're good at and then turn that over and just bless the life of someone else.

Melissa: That's perfect. Cause I talk on this podcast all the time that we don't have to complicate service and helping others and being kind and giving back. We can truly just take the things that come natural to us. And I love that story because drawing that cute little picture is so natural to a small child, and it made a difference for you. And she obviously understood what she'd been taught and wanted to act on that. So I love that. Any other stories you want to share?

Danielle: So, yeah, a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity. I partnered with a couple different organizations, and mostly the Miss PG organization and those girls, and we collected over 300 backpacks full of school supplies, and we took them up to the Bud Bailey housing connect up in Salt Lake to the refugees living there. And that was something, obviously super great service opportunity, and it was so powerful to see people's lives changed in a way that we could make them change. But I feel like the thing that stuck out to me most was it was a little bit uncomfortable going in there and being around people that didn't speak my language. I didn't know anyone there, and it was mostly little kids. But the thing that was most powerful to me that I've noticed in every single service project I've done is that you really, you make it what you want to make it, if that makes sense. It made it so much more powerful when I was able to just step out of my comfort zone and just go. I started a game of tag with the little kids because we couldn't speak the same language. I couldn't talk to them at all, but I still wanted to make that experience special for the both of us. And so a large part of that was stepping out of the comfort zone and again, taking that lead and taking that initiative, just trying to make a special experience for both you and I think that makes all the difference in any service act that you do.

Melissa: Absolutely. And I love how service is so unifying, right?

Danielle: Oh, totally. 100%. Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah. It doesn't matter our background or even our different beliefs or whatever it might be, service can be such a unifying experience.

Danielle: Yeah, I saw that in all the clubs that I went into. I didn't know anyone really in the clubs, but by the end of the little lesson I gave and we were doing the service project, we were all, like, talking and laughing together, and it really, yeah. Totally unified me with them and unified them together just through that service.

Melissa: Well, as you've worked with lead with Lite, I know maybe your why at first was to just help you get a platform or a social, a service initiative for your competition. But has that kind of evolved over time as you've worked with it? What your biggest why is for continuing to do it and work with lead with light.

Danielle: Honestly, I just love having those constant service opportunities and having a reason behind why I do it. And again, it's like I would love. Honestly, my big dream and vision with it is to teach others the leadership skills that I've been learning through this segue of service. Because that was the exact same for me when I was in these leadership opportunities. It wasn't. I was just doing student council for the jacket and for the popularity. It was really the most enjoyable and fulfilling part I found in it was the service we would do for the schools, putting on activities and helping them enjoy their high school experience, their junior high experience. And so I really want people to have those opportunities to look outwards again, just not even in the service aspect, but in their daily lives, like active listening and building up others. Those are just simple skills that will take them so far in life. And so if I can provide just one segue to help them learn those skills, then that's what I really want to do.

Melissa: I love, again, the idea of leadership and service because I think sometimes, even for me as an adult, sometimes I feel intimidated by experiences, or I think I don't have enough experience or I don't have enough know how or I don't belong here. But when you're, when you're serving and you're helping in a lot of those situations, nobody cares what your background is. They just need willing hearts and able hands and people willing to give and to serve. And it does not matter what your experience is or if you feel like you have the leadership skills or whatever it is. And so service is a great way to learn all of those skills, all of those things, in a totally natural, low stress environment, because everyone's just there to work together and to serve together.

Danielle: Yeah, for sure.

Melissa: Well, I wanted to segue a little bit from talking about your initiative to just a little bit about Miss America, pageants or pageants in general, because I think sometimes people don't know much about them or they kind of get a bad rap or.

Danielle: Totally 100%.

Melissa: And I did a pageant myself when I was a teenager. I know those experiences can be so good for you to learn and to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and to make friends and to just have those experiences that you really can't get in many other ways. So I want you to just share a little bit about your experience with that. And then I just would love to talk about this idea that pageant contestants do, these community service initiatives that are a huge benefit to their communities. So maybe start a little bit off with your pageant experience and some of those things.

Danielle: Yeah. No, I totally agree that pageants can totally get a bad rap sometimes. There are, like, the super glitzy, sparkly gown like pageants that you do, but in the Miss America organization or the Miss America opportunity is what they like to like us to call it, you have your pageants on a local level, and then if you win a title at a local level, then you go to Miss Utah and then to Miss America. And so there's a couple different areas that you compete in in the pageant, and the areas are your private interview with the judges is which. In which you talk about your community service initiative most of the time, and they just have to get to know you. You only have ten minutes with the judges, and so you really have to learn how to pitch yourself to the judges, and it takes a lot of confidence and stepping out of your comfort zone and practicing talking to people. And so you just talk about your initiative basically like this, but just ten minutes. And then all the onstage stuff is you do a little opening number, like dance at the beginning with all the contestants, and then you do the onstage question, which is pretty challenging. Again, it's like stepping out of your comfort zone and having to answer a question in front in front of a bunch of people. The next area is fitness, which they actually change from swimsuits of fitness, which I love. And you go on stage in a workout outfit, and then you do a couple poses. Music. And it's honestly my favorite part of the competition. It's so much fun because you're just having fun up there, and no one's. You're not judging you on your body. They're judging you on what you have to say about your fitness initiative and why you care about having a healthy body. And so that was another part that I loved about the pageant.

Melissa: Yeah, I love that.

Danielle: And then they have the talent portion and then the evening gown portion. So it was all honestly, in each area you had, you grew so, so much. It was honestly fun and very low stress, as long as you practice and you got good at it, and you were able to step out of your comfort zone a little bit. So it was a super good experience for me.

Melissa: That's great. And was it. Did you say it was pleasant Grove that you competed?

Danielle: Yeah. Yep. Miss Posing Grove.

Melissa: And you mentioned this at the beginning, but I just want to go over that a little bit. These community service initiatives, every contestant chooses one. They're a huge part of what you're doing. And how do you go about choosing that and maybe share some of the other initiatives? I'm kind of putting you on the spot with that one, but maybe initiatives that, you know, that these women have chosen to do and to focus on.

Danielle: Yeah. The Miss Pleasant Grove organization has an amazing committee, and we had workshops every Saturday, and you would go in, and you would be able to talk with people about your initiative, and they would help you draw out your strengths, is their biggest emphasis is draw out your strengths and draw out something that's specific to you, that you want to share with other people and base your initiative off of that, something you really care about. And I remember one of the moms of two, Miss Pleasant Groves, she's on the committee for, and her biggest thing was service. Like, that was her big aspect that she did pageants. And, like, why she was on the committee for the pageant. She always just kept saying, choose something that sets your. That sets your heart on fire and share that with other people. And so some of the other initiatives, the girl who actually won her initiative was connect without tech, and that was about building healthy relationships beyond technology and being able to get off of your technology and connect with the people in your family and at school and in your community. And then there was another Gal who I've actually been getting more involved with her initiative. It's called adaptive adventure, and she focuses on individuals with special needs and being able to create recreational opportunities for them so they can still experience recreation in a way that's adaptable to them. And so we take them kayaking, we take them to the pond, we take them fishing. Just anything to get them outdoors in something that they usually don't have the opportunity to do. So I've been really involved with that lately this summer, too.

Melissa: That's great.

Danielle: It's just super fun. Awesome ways to get out and surf.

Melissa: Yes.

Melissa: Thank you so much for sharing some of those. And, yeah, the people I've talked to seems to be something they always can personally connect with, either something they've overcome in their own life or something they, like you said, feel passionate about. So, yeah, yeah. I hope anyone that hears about pageants will focus and remember about those community service initiatives that a lot of you are awesome, good women doing good things in your communities to make a difference, and that's why you're doing what you're doing. Well, I do have listeners from all over, so I always love to end each show with just general advice and encouragement. I would love to hear any general advice that you have. Maybe for someone that wants to compete and choose a community service initiative, or even just anyone that feels passionate about something and wants to find ways to implement that or teach that to others, like you've had the opportunity to do just general advice you would give, give in any of those areas.

Danielle: Honestly, my biggest piece of advice is just start where you are and build off of that. It can be so overwhelming to. If you want to start a platform, if you want to start a nonprofit, that can be a really overwhelming task. So my piece of advice is just find the people around you that would be supportive of it and would jump on board with you and totally go around to these things and make events happen for you and just get that ball rolling. Just one little thing at a time. I remember in the first few weeks when I was starting my initiative, I just went on just serve and was just looking at all the opportunities I could have to get out and just have a service project that I could talk about and maybe rope my friends into it. And again, like, maybe you start with just finding what you're passionate about. Yeah. Just once you get that ball rolling, then opportunities will totally flood your way.

Melissa: I love just serve. That is a great website, and I love you mentioned, just gather those around you because that is how I found your Instagram account. Yeah, I think it was another contestant or someone that had done a pageant, and I saw how you were all connected to each other through your accounts, and you all had pictures of the projects you're supporting and helping each other in and just this great group of girls and women that are working together. And I was so inspired by that.

Danielle: And that's honestly, the biggest part of lead with light, honestly, is just building those connections. And leadership is something that not everyone can relate to because obviously not everyone's, like, the leader type or, like, in a leadership position officially. And that was honestly one of my biggest struggles is I'm like, how can I help people relate to leadership and service? And that was the number one way, is just connecting with the people around you. And whether you think it or not, you're a leader in some way because you have influence and connection with the people around you. Use that for the better, use that influence for the better, and serve them in the ways that you can.

Melissa: Absolutely. I think we all have opportunities to lead, even if just by example. Well, thank you so much, Danielle. This will end if there's anything else you want to share and then also where people can find you to learn more about you and lead with light.

Danielle: Yeah. So honestly, just follow my Instagram lead with light. And if you have any service opportunities that you would love to rope me into, I would love to have the opportunity to go and connect with people and have more opportunities to get out in the community.

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. I'll add that anyone here in Utah county, they seem like a powerhouse group of girls that are doing awesome things. So that's great. Well, thank you so much, Danielle. It's been great to have you on the podcast today.

Danielle: Thank you. This was awesome.

Melissa: That was my interview with Danielle Simcoe and her initiative, lead with Light. And wasn't that so impressive? I kept thinking after that interview back to when I was Danielle's age, just graduating from high school, getting ready to go to college and start that next phase of life. And I do remember participating in service projects or opportunities when they came up through my church organization or in other capacities. But I do not remember or even think I was as intentional as Danielle has been. And that's what so impressed me as I had the chance to speak with her and hear about some of her experiences. She has been so intentional in wanting to teach these leadership principles to children and youth and also to take these service opportunities as a chance to learn about these principles herself and continue to teach them to others. I'm just so impressed by that and so impressed by the other women she's had the opportunity to work with and the good things that they've done. And I loved how she shared that. Service is what you make of it that anyone can step into those opportunities and lead out and serve and reach out to those around them. And especially there has she shared that whether you think it or not, you are a leader because you have influence and connection with the people around you. And every one of us can use that influence and connection to do good. And of course, I also appreciated that she took the time to teach us a little bit about what a pageanthe looks like in the Miss America organization. And I especially loved how she shared about these community service initiatives that these women do. And I know that sometimes these pageants can be a little misunderstood or people don't really understand how they work. But really, the purpose behind a lot of them is service and making a difference in their communities. Each of these contestants pick these community service initiatives, and it is not just words on a page or lip service behind a microphone. As you have heard here from Danielle, these are real initiatives that they are actively pursuing and doing out within their communities. These young adults really are making a difference in the world, and I loved how she shared that as well. So I will leave a link to Danielle's Instagram account if you'd like to go learn about her initiative and the things that she's been able to do with it that will be in the show. Notes I would also like to remind anyone listening that if you enjoyed this episode or thought of someone that would enjoy listening to it, please share it with a friend. And if you are someone who's enjoyed listening to the do something more podcast, as always, you can leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Melissa: And of course, as always, I hope.

Melissa: This week you find a way to do something more to lift, help, inspire, or make a difference.