Meet the Women of Cincy Team: Sydney Llewellyn
The Women of Cincy residency isn’t like any other journalism or communications internship; our residents are not nameless fact-checkers – we want them to leave with both professional and personal growth; we want them to go out into the world more confident and capable human beings.
The main drive of the residency is to enable young journalists, writers, and communicators with the skills and experience needed for the professional world. The residents help edit our stories, create social media posts, write articles, and assist in projects, practicing vital grammar and language skills while challenging their creative brains.
But besides grammar and editing and writing, we want these students to develop emotional intelligence. We have weekly meetings to discuss any struggles, questions, or obstacles we might have in our lives. We also take the enneagram personality test and other behavioral assessments to discuss and explore what our results can teach us.
This fall, we welcome Sydney Llewellyn to our team! Sydney will be our resident here at Women of Cincy as an English creative writing and rhetoric and professional writing student at the University of Cincinnati.
More information about our residency here!
Why did you want to join Women of Cincy?
I think that Cincinnati has such a diverse, creative, and passionate community, and it makes me so happy that an organization like Women of Cincy is recognizing that. There is something so special about this city, and I knew I wanted to be a part of sharing the stories of the people that make it so special. The people of Cincinnati do amazing things every day, and I think Women of Cincy’s mission to connect people to those stories is so exciting and fulfilling to be a part of.
What does empathy mean to you?
I think empathy has so much to do with listening. Listening to people’s experiences. Listening to their opinions. Listening to their concerns. It’s impossible to entirely put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but by providing space for others to share their stories, we can begin to understand each other better, no matter how different we may be. By listening and truly taking the time to sit with someone’s perspective, trying to see the world through their eyes, we can become a more united, more compassionate community.
What, professionally or personally, are you most proud of?
In the spring semester of my Sophomore year, I entered a fiction short story called Salmon Roe that I wrote into the Hopton Short Story Contest, and I received an Honorable Mention. It was the first time in my college career I’d been formally recognized for a piece of my creative work. The piece has a lot to do with the complex experiences of mothers and is still one of my favorites I’ve ever written because of how important I think the message is. To know that someone else read it and liked it as well is such a gratifying feeling.
What fictional character do you identify the most with? Why them?
I remember watching Sailor Moon growing up and being able to relate so much to Usagi, as well as admire her. She’s the hero of the story—brave and kind—but she’s also a teenage girl. She cries, and she likes to play video games, and she’s not very good at math, and she is always just trying her best. I think that vulnerability in teenage girls is such a courageous thing to own. She’s also an older sister just like me and is fiercely protective over her friends and family. Above all, I was so impressed by her ability to see the good in others, even at their worst. I loved how she would talk to the characters we had thought to be one-dimensional villains, and reveal their humanity to us, changing our perspective. Forgiveness and compassion are such important values to me, and I strive to be (and hope I already am) like Usagi in that way as well.
Tell us about an influential woman in your life.
My high school English teacher, Miss. Hall has probably had a greater impact on my life than anyone else. She is such an incredible person; I don’t even know where to start. She was an excellent English teacher, and a spectacular mentor to me, but that honestly wasn’t what made her so incredible. I was able to have her as my teacher for all four years of high school, and throughout that time, she supported my peers and me in ways that went above and beyond her job description as an English teacher. Her classroom was always a safe place for any student that was struggling, and she would take the time to listen to you—whether it was about school or not—and help you however she could. There were so many other things too, like having tea in her room for anxious students to drink, or extra snacks in her desk drawers for students that were struggling with food instability. She is one of those people that I believe was put on Earth to do good, and I am always reminding myself to live like her; with a passion for loving people.