Ryan Benjamin | The inspiration in the every day

When it comes down to it, we respect and follow the leaders we feel we personally know best. So really, that's rarely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Tiger Woods.

Instead, the leaders we tend to emulate are those we directly interact with. One of those leaders is Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who travels all over the world to report on the world's most heinous crimes against humanity.

There are not many people with as much political capital on international issues as Kristof, and as he spoke at Penn this week, he reminded us how important it is to work for a cause larger than oneself. In a roundtable, I realized that he is admirable because he leads by example. There are very few people who place themselves in such utter danger to bring to our attention issues so easily ignored.

Kristof practices what he preaches. He knows that simply fundraising for child abuse is not enough. In order to make a difference you have to Go There, wherever There might be, and Be Part of it. The Limousine Liberal comes to mind, the advocate for policy changes to urban education who will never set foot in an inner-city school. This is sometimes accepted as the norm, especially at Penn, where we have other Very Important Things to do. Kristof shows us how not to be that person.

For every Kristof, there are also leaders in name, only who don't actually lead - and we must learn from these people, too. Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson, though a respectable and engaging man, struck me in a recent Fox Leadership talk as someone who would rather steer the ship than influence social change.

My beef with Robertson comes from something he said about providing Wharton students with a moral compass. According to Robertson, Wharton students generally "follow the money" into the most lucrative jobs.

But shouldn't the nation's No. 1 business school do something to encourage students to go into product development, science or even public service, rather than the money-driven world of finance? Robertson doesn't think so, because students should be given a "marketplace" of options rather than be directed toward a concentration like social entrepreneurship.

With all due respect to Dean Robertson, that's preposterous. In these economic times, there are significantly fewer finance jobs on the market, so I'm not sure why Robertson doesn't agree that this is the perfect opportunity to encourage students to take alternative jobs or a gap year.

I have listened to many famous people during my years at Penn, some inspiring, some not. But sometimes we forget that there are leaders in our midst all the time - our fellow students. I spoke with Wharton sophomore Catherine Gao, chief development officer of Givology.org, a site that provides a means for donating small amounts of money to individual students in need of educational support in the world's poorest communities.

One essential aspect of the site is its commitment to ensuring the efficacy of its programs. In addition to providing an outlet for donors to write letters to recipients, the organization is implementing a full-scale fellowship program for donors to work, around the world, at the partenering NGOs. This way, Going There becomes an integral part of their mission. For their efforts, Kristof even gave them a shout-out in his speech.

Gao believes her inspiration comes from the people she is able to help. "I complain so much about the little things here, like the stress of school," she said. "But everyone here is so lucky. The majority of the world's population has no opportunity, and in the end we're all citizens of the world."

In Robertson's marketplace of options, the Givology students - most of whom are in Wharton - found their niche in social entrepreneurship. But they are the exception, not the rule, and a little encouragement for budding social entrepreneurs could go a long way.

We often look to those with discernible power as role models, and we can learn much from them. But let's not forget that we can learn life's most inspiring lessons from those without titles.

Ryan Benjamin is a College senior from New Haven, Conn. A Connecticut Yankee appears on Fridays. His email address is benjamin@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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