The educator and clinical psychologist has built a career across higher education, research and private practice around a deceptively simple idea: helping people become more capable of directing their own lives.
By Los Angeles Tribune Staff
LOS ANGELES — Leadership is often described in the language of authority: the ability to make decisions, set direction and persuade others to follow.
Dr. Azeb’s career suggests another possibility.
For the educator and licensed clinical psychologist, influence has largely taken place in quieter settings — classrooms, clinical environments, research and conversations with people attempting to better understand themselves. Her work has been less concerned with directing people than with helping them develop the capacity to direct themselves.
It is a philosophy that connects the different parts of a career spanning psychology, education, research and community service.
Dr. Azeb serves as director of Clinical and Training at Los Angeles Harbor College and works as a psychologist for the Special Resources Center at El Camino College. She also maintains a private practice. Across those roles, she occupies an unusual intersection: part clinician, part educator and part institutional leader.
That combination matters.
Psychologists working within educational institutions encounter people not simply as students or patients, but often at moments when academic performance, identity, personal circumstances and mental health intersect. The work requires clinical knowledge, but also judgment, patience and an understanding that progress cannot always be imposed on a timetable.
Dr. Azeb’s professional interests have reflected that complexity.
As a researcher, she examined the effects of HIV on neurocognitive functioning among older adults as well as depression among elderly adults living with HIV/AIDS. Her broader scholarly work has included mental health and psychotherapy, with research and presentations addressing person-centered therapy, Buddhism and brief psychotherapy.
She has presented work at gatherings including the International Conference on Social Sciences and the Society for Psychotherapy Research Conference.
Taken individually, the subjects can appear disparate. Taken together, they reveal a consistent interest in how human beings adapt, make meaning and retain agency under difficult circumstances.
That same question increasingly occupies researchers studying leadership in health and human-service organizations. Contemporary scholarship on person-centered leadership emphasizes relationships, self-awareness, collaboration and empowerment rather than command-and-control authority. A recent review of the field found that person-centered leadership development frequently focuses on creating environments in which people can develop their own capabilities and participate more meaningfully in decisions affecting them. (PubMed Central (PMC))
The connection to psychology is not accidental.
Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, developed person-centered psychotherapy around respect for the individual’s capacity for growth. His work ultimately extended beyond the therapy room into workshops involving communication, personal development, empowerment and social change. (American Psychological Association)
Dr. Azeb’s career reflects a similar conviction in practice: that helping another person does not necessarily mean determining the destination for them.
Sometimes it means creating the conditions in which they can find it themselves.
A Different Kind of Authority
There is an inherent tension in many helping professions. Expertise gives the practitioner authority, but effective practice often requires knowing when not to exercise it.
The psychologist knows more about psychology than the patient. The educator possesses knowledge the student has come to acquire. The administrator has institutional authority that others do not.
Yet the ultimate objective is independence.
Research examining empowerment-oriented clinical education has described this transition as moving professionals from the role of “fixer” toward that of facilitator — helping people develop greater agency rather than positioning the professional as the permanent source of answers. (PubMed Central (PMC))
That distinction offers a useful way to understand Dr. Azeb’s approach to leadership.
Her interest in supporting, coaching and inspiring others toward what she describes as a self-actualizing life places individual development at the center of the equation. Success is therefore not measured merely by what the leader accomplishes personally, but by what other people become capable of accomplishing.
It is a less visible form of leadership, and perhaps for that reason an increasingly important one.
Institutions are full of people with titles. Far fewer develop cultures in which other people become stronger.
Dr. Azeb did not arrive at nonprofit and community work through a carefully designed career plan. Her interest developed gradually. That evolution is revealing because it suggests that service became an extension of her professional worldview rather than a separate identity adopted alongside it.
Curiosity has remained an important part of that worldview.
Her interests have moved across conventional disciplinary boundaries — from neurocognitive research and depression to psychotherapy, Buddhist thought and human development. Rather than weakening the coherence of her work, that breadth points toward its central question: What allows a person to live more fully?
For an educator, the question concerns learning.
For a psychologist, it concerns emotional and psychological development.
For a researcher, it concerns evidence.
And for a leader, it becomes a question of environment: What conditions allow other people to flourish?
Recent research on person-centered leadership has increasingly treated leadership in precisely those terms, emphasizing the creation of cultures where people have voice, responsibility and meaningful participation rather than simply receiving instructions from above. (PubMed Central (PMC))
Service Put Into Practice
Dr. Azeb’s commitment to service has taken institutional form through the Mekdela Global Outreach Foundation, where she serves as executive director. The organization is built around an ambitious premise: that education, health, leadership and economic opportunity can help communities transform adversity into something more enduring.
The foundation’s work focuses on education, rural health care, wellness, leadership mentorship, community development and economic self-sustainability. Its broader vision centers on expanding opportunity for vulnerable children and communities in rural Ethiopia affected by war, poverty, displacement and civil conflict.
For Dr. Azeb, the mission represents more than philanthropy. It brings together many of the ideas that have defined her professional life as a psychologist, educator and researcher — particularly the belief that lasting progress comes from giving people the resources and support to develop their own potential.
On Saturday, August 29, that mission will take center stage in Los Angeles when the foundation presents its Cufflinks & Pearls Charity Gala at The Preserve LA.
Billed as “A Night of Elegance. A Legacy of Impact,” the evening will bring together philanthropists, community leaders and changemakers in support of education, empowerment and sustainable development in Ethiopia. The program is scheduled from 6 to 11 p.m. and will include a reception, dinner, silent auction, fashion show and live entertainment.
The gala also provides a window into Dr. Azeb’s conception of leadership. Her work does not separate personal development from community development. The same principle underlying her work in psychology — helping individuals develop greater agency over their lives — can be seen on a larger scale in the foundation’s effort to help communities develop greater capacity for their own futures.
That may ultimately be the most revealing measure of her leadership: not simply what she has accomplished, but what she is attempting to make possible for others.
Leadership Without the Performance
Modern leadership has also become unusually performative.
Visibility can be mistaken for influence. Confidence can be mistaken for competence. The vocabulary of leadership — purpose, transformation, empowerment — can sometimes become detached from the slower work those words are supposed to describe.
Dr. Azeb’s professional life offers a useful counterpoint.
Clinical work is built on confidentiality. Education frequently produces results that belong primarily to the student. Research advances through accumulation rather than spectacle. Much of the most consequential work happens without an audience.
There is something instructive in that.
The strongest leaders in human-centered professions eventually confront a paradox: their success should make other people less dependent on them.
A teacher wants students who can think without the teacher.
A psychologist seeks greater autonomy for the person receiving care.
A mentor hopes the person being mentored eventually exceeds the need for mentorship.
And a leader, at his or her best, creates people capable of leading themselves.
That philosophy does not diminish authority. It gives authority a purpose.
For Dr. Azeb, the connecting thread across psychology, education, scholarship and service appears to be a belief that human potential is not something a leader bestows upon another person. It is something already present that can be cultivated, challenged and given room to emerge.
In an era fascinated by increasingly elaborate definitions of leadership, hers points toward something considerably simpler.
Help people become more capable.
Then give them room to become who they can be.
For more visit: https://www.mekdelaglobaloutreachfoundation.org/
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