Annalisa Schembri elected to JCI International Board of Directors as Vice President

JCI Malta Senator and Member Annalisa Schembri has been elected to the 2023 JCI International Board of Directors as Vice President, following the 2022 JCI World Congress held in Hong Kong at the start of November.

Her new role sees her assigned to Europe with a special focus to assist and support JCI’s local organisations in Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Moldova.

JCI is an international leadership organisation for people aged from 18 to 40 who want to develop their personal and professional skills within a local and international community. This view is explained in the organisation’s mission to “provide leadership development opportunities that empower young people to create positive change”.

Based on this mindset, Ms Schembri, who is a full-time freelance professional in the arts, shared her views on leadership: “Leadership requires us to have a head, a heart, and a hand. A head that gives us clarity of vision; a heart that, with compassion, taps beyond the vision to make it concrete and sustainable; a hand that allows us, to give it forward, to serve others.”

“We must align our passion, ideas, and strengths to find an anchor in purpose, as this drives us to serve with the best version of ourselves,” she explained. “And this is what I bring to serve in this one year to lead position in 2023: the best version of myself – with a focused head, a resilient, caring heart, and experienced hands to sow the right seeds in the right places,” Ms Schembri said.

“This, paired with the passion I have for JCI and the experience I have as a global networker, a seasoned JCI member and a creative professional in the arts, gives me the tools and the strength to lead and give back,” she added.

Ms Schembri has been involved in JCI since 2009, and started off as a JCI Malta member within JCI La Valette, where she played a vital role in the planning and execution of the 2014 JCI European Conference that was hosted by the organisation. In 2014, she was awarded the role of JCI Senator, with the prestigious role being given to those members who have shown dedication to the organisation and gone “over and beyond their call of duty”. She was then elected as JCI Malta National President in 2015 and was a hands-on advisor for the 2020 European Conference in Dublin, that turned out to be the first ever fully digital conference for the organisation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I know first-hand and will forever be a testimony of the radical, positive transformation that this organisation can bring to one’s life. One member at a time, one conversation at a time, one project at a time. This is how we reimagine JCI to ensure that it is here for generations to come,” Ms Schembri concluded.