Name: Allayna N. Dail
High School Attended: Pamlico County High
Home County: Pamlico
Colleges Attended/ Years Attended: UNC Wilmington (2013-2017)
Majors: History
County Now Living In: Brunswick
Employer: City of Southport
Title: Assistant Director of Community Relations
Years Working for Current Employer: 1 year
Follow Allayna Dail on LinkedIn.
What does rural mean to you?
Rural is the building blocks of North Carolina. My rural community is where I grew up and have some of my fondest memories. I used to think rural meant slow-paced and quiet, but now I know it means growth and opportunity.
What were some of your major accomplishments during college?
I was awarded the Mary Bason Broadfoot Internship, which provides an on-the-job educational experience for students in museum studies or library science. The internship allowed me to essentially start a library archive from scratch. I truly feel as though I would not have been awarded that opportunity had it not been for my previous experiences and other internships through Golden LEAF Scholarship. By the time I applied for this internship, I had completed two internships successfully, while most of my peers were just starting to look for internship opportunities for the first time.
What would you tell someone interested in applying for the Golden LEAF Scholarship about being a recipient?
The Golden LEAF Scholarship truly opened so many doors for me. It allowed me to meet people who shaped my college experiences and pushed me beyond my comfort levels while a student. It also allowed me to enter the work force with more experience under my belt than my peers, which shaped the opportunities that were offered to me.
What kind of leadership roles are you serving in currently?
Currently I serve as a liaison between the Community Relations Department and several partners within the community, including the Southport Historical Society, Southport-Oak Island Chamber of Commerce, and nonprofit organizations. I also am a member of the N.C. Association of Festivals and Events.
What did you learn during your Golden LEAF Scholars Leadership Program experience?
Golden LEAF shaped my confidence and helped me become the leader I am today. It also taught me how to network and communicate with my peers in a way that builds collaborative networks.
What internship experiences did you have?
In 2014, I served as an intern of Group Tours & Sales at Tryon Palace in New Bern. I worked as a docent for exhibits and manned the ticket desk and became familiar with their ticketing system. While in the office, I worked with timesheets and came up with a new filing system. I was introduced to selling group tickets, how to talk to customers who called with questions about the tours we offered, as well as booking those tours using their system.
In 2015, I served as an intern of Education at Tryon Palace in New Bern. I helped set up community activities and participated in those activities. I had a week-long project called Traveling Trunks. During this project, I created a week’s worth of fourth-grade lesson plans to coincide with a school trip to Tryon Palace.
In 2016, I served as an intern at the Pender County Museum in Burgaw. I helped complete genealogy research and created an electronic filing system. My second project was to create a new exhibit for the museum. The final project was to create a project that linked the community, specifically students, and the museum together in a fun and educational way. I put together a “Preservation Celebration” where we had an educator in each room of the museum. The goal of this event was to fundraise, and the event did well-enough that they were able to start work on restoring more rooms of the museum.