Like all of the students of the Clinton School of Public Service, Ophelia Akoto and Rodrigo Santos Legaspi arrived in Little Rock with the desire to learn the science behind public service. In addition to the skills and lessons they learned through the school’s Master of Public Service degree program, Akoto and Santos Legaspi’s educational formation took on an additional layer of expertise.

Akoto, a native of Ghana, and Santos Legaspi of Texas, were named McLarty Scholars and had the opportunity to participate in research they hope will help countries around the world recognize and bring forward women across the spectrum of government, civic, and business leadership.

“We believe that projects with real-world consequences hold some of the greatest potential for helping students become focused, compassionate, and engaged citizens,” said Donna McLarty who, along with her husband Mack, founded the McLarty Scholars program in 2012 to empower the next generation of leaders. “The perspective McLarty Scholars gain from their time in Washington is a necessary component to deepening and broadening their comprehension of national and global issues.

“Our hope and expectation is that each Scholar will become a leader, whether in their own community, our country, or across the globe. We trust that their experience as a McLarty Scholar will continue to inform their choices and that we continue to build a community of civic-minded individuals who strive to make a difference.”

The research was completed through Vital Voices Global Partnership, an organization that describes itself as a “venture catalyst” for its investment of time, resources, and expertise in female changemakers around the globe.

The research project sought to develop measurement tools by which entities within a given ecosystem could better evaluate local governance and programming and how that enhanced or impeded women’s leadership development.

“I think one thing that really stands out in this research is it introduces a new theory of change for measuring women’s leadership,” Akoto said. “Through this, I hope women can be able to implement contribution mapping to actually map out their leadership journeys, where they started to where they are now.”

“As evaluators we’re always thinking about methodology. What are the toolkits we can propose, adapt?” said Alejandra Garcia Diaz Villamil, then of Vital of Voices, who worked with the McLarty Scholars on the project. “In the end result, we want to be able to identify challenges, but also identify where we did something well.

“That’s what makes our work unique; we adapted two methodologies to create a new methodology that allowed us to see a holistic picture of women’s leadership and to measure it in a different perspective.”

The project relied heavily on personal interviews, which was a departure from other more common information gathering methods.

“The research method we really focused on was interviewing leaders,” Santos Legaspi said. “I interviewed eight women from Honduras, in Spanish, which was the first time the program interviewed participants in their own language. We looked at evaluating their leadership journeys through the Vital Voices programs.”

According to Diaz Villamil, the process unfolded with careful consideration as to the underlying nature of issues that distort measurement and taking a more comprehensive view of the subject being studied.

“The first thing was to understand the problem,” she said. “The question at hand was ‘How do we measure effectively women’s empowerment within the leadership journey?’ And the way it comes to Vital Voices is, how can we measure our leadership model?

“A lot of attempts have been made to gather results based on figures and money, primarily. But counting all these beneficiaries or being able to say we dispersed all the grant money is just too narrow to really look at the overall of what was happening within the leaders and how Vital Voices was contributing.”

Instead, the trio went deeper to consider those environmental benefits and hurdles that affected women in their leadership journey.

“There’s all these interconnecting events that create this pathway of leadership,” Diaz Villamil said. “Nobody has really thought about leadership and empowerment as a process rather than thinking about it as you attain it, you’ve got director on your resume, you’re supposed to be a leader. Or you are a senator, so you should be a leader and empowered. But that isn’t necessarily true.

“It’s rather the accumulation of different events that allows you to get greater agency, greater self-confidence and allow you to get even greater opportunities and visibility and greater opportunities for influence.”

The mission struck a chord with the two Clinton School students, both of whom possess outstanding leadership qualities and are determined to make their mark by paving the way for others facing cultural and societal barriers. For that, both credited the Clinton School for equipping them with the tools to harness their ambition to affect change.

“The main factors that allowed me to be successful were the two previous projects that I completed at the Clinton School, the Practicum and the International Public Service Project,” Santos Legaspi said. “The Practicum project was with the Central Arkansas Library System, and my International Public Service Project was in Sri Lanka with an organization called Gammadda, which I completed virtually due to COVID. All the research skills and the writing skills I used are what helped me be successful with Vital Voices.”

For Akoto, a new, broader perspective was one of the most useful elements of her Clinton School experience to be put into play with the research project.

“My undergrad was from such a small institution so I didn’t get to really experience a lot of diversity and different cultures,” she said. “But then at the Clinton School, I was really exposed to that. It was like checking my heart constantly, checking how I feel about what people say and then trying to understand other people’s point of views.

“Trying to put myself in their shoes and trying to think about why they are saying what they are saying and why they are doing what they are doing, I think that’s the biggest thing that I took away from the Clinton School.”

The research paper was published in February as a chapter in “New Directions in Evaluation,” and will have a lasting impact on the continuing struggle to improve leadership opportunities and development for women around the world.

“Mack and I are so pleased that the culmination of ten years of McLarty Scholars’ work has resulted in a new research tool that will enable NGOs to more clearly understand and successfully synthesize their collected data,” McLarty said. “This newly published methodology has contributed to the growing body of knowledge that helps to inform practitioners and public policy makers.

“We are equally pleased that this new tool will become a part of the Clinton School’s curriculum. This result would never have happened without the strong partnership between the Clinton School and the McLarty Scholars.”

With their work now within reach of academics and changemakers the world over, Akoto feels a great sense of accomplishment as she and her classmate move to the next phase of their journey, she pursuing a doctorate and he working in the U.S. Senate.

“Women need to be celebrated all over the world even in the minute things,” she said. “I believe that even mothers and housewives can use this tool to measure their leadership in their house, in their homes, in their kids’ lives. I hope it actually helps women celebrate their achievements on all levels. That’s what I hope for.”

Story written by Dwain Hebda