Johna Speller: The New Generation of Leadership Development – GDN Exclusive

By Demetrius Haddock, GDN Contributing Writer

Can a 17-year-old be a leadership guru? If anyone thinks that it is not possible, Johna Speller is testing that limited thinking. She has been a life member of the NAACP since age 3! She knows the challenges of living with racism well. She is a senior at the NC School of Science and Mathematics.

A tenacious advocate for youth empowerment and leadership, Johna wants to make sure that young people know that there is power in their voices and that they can make change happen. In this way, she wants to be a catalyst for leadership development among youth in North Carolina. Certainly, she already is!

Leadership Starts with Education

Wonderful to behold, a young person who is humble in demeanor and knows the value of being educated, Johna is passionate about strategizing and acting to drive positive change in underserved communities. With two college-educated parents, she credits them with setting the tone for her leadership and her belief that the things she wants to do are possible.

In addition to education at home, the quality of education at school, Johna believes, needs to expose young people to opportunities to engage meaningfully in their communities. “Students consume a lot of content that reflects the injustices of our nation and are moved by current events, but many do not know how to be a part of the solution,” she describes. Accordingly, young people need schools that emphasize how to apply information, use the power of their voices, and “bring change to our society.”

“My leadership starts with education” and Johna believes, as a major part of young people’s lives, schools that connect young people to real-world problems would be encouraging them to “speak up for each other and build leadership among each other.” Using their voices to speak up for the underrepresented would help them to become aware of the power they have for change.

Similar to the differences in home lives, not all schools can provide the type of opportunities that young people need. Coming from a small, rural North Carolina county that has significantly less funding for its schools compared to the state’s metropolitan areas, Johna sees her current school, the NC School of Science and Mathematics, as vastly different in terms of the opportunities it provides. This glaring and unsettling difference is but one example of why she believes equitable educational opportunities in every school, regardless of location or neighborhood economic status, must be prioritized. Student voices could make a difference in the real-world problem of limited funding for these rural areas.

Passion to Serve

This year, Johna was elected President of the NC NAACP Youth & College Division. She says she is “opposed to people getting in positions to have the title. I would still continue with what I am passionate about if I was not elected as president.” She desires to work with others and calls on us all to “change our mindsets in terms of who can be a leader.” Only sixteen years old herself, this young leader offers, “If we, as young people of color, can visualize and assert ourselves as leaders, then we as a nation will have no choice but to witness the true power of black youth leadership.” She says in her experience, Blacks are unjustly underrepresented in honors/AP classes in schools and it carries over into so many areas.

Looking to her future, Johna forecasted, “I plan to stay connected to the NAACP and would love to serve as a national leader.” She added that she would love to work for the NAACP. In terms of her education plans, she will continue to serve by studying political science in preparation for law school. Thurgood Marshall and his work on the landmark Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas serves as a consistent inspiration for Johna. As she describes, “We have ideals in terms of our Constitution but we have not yet fulfilled them.” She wants to help us get closer to those ideals in practice and “for me a strong understanding of how the law works is needed to be effective,” she boldly asserts.

Although she is focused currently on internships and community work, Johna is still deeply engaged in her responsibilities as NC Youth & College Division President. She wants NAACP national leadership to help develop consistency among youth members by engaging them more in “doing the work.” She would like to see youth integrated into the Image Awards as a part of the production, performing, speaking, and much more.

Johna truly believes in teaching young people to advocate for themselves and their communities. If we do this, there is no limit to what can be achieved and our society will be all the better for it. Youth leadership guru, Johna Speller, is a living example!

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