What do you look for in a leader? Perhaps, you would select someone who is intelligent and hardworking, or maybe someone with charisma and charm. Katie Anselmi’s (MS ’25, PWS) perspective on leadership is a little different. “If you're looking to help people, you can't go wrong.”
Service-driven leadership is something Anselmi has incorporated in every aspect of her life; whether she’s participating in a fellowship with a group specializing in environmental equipment or researching the turf field of the LaVell Edwards Stadium before and after BYU football games, Anselmi strives to infuse each endeavor with her unique brand of leadership.
Anselmi is a graduate fellow with the METER Group, an environmental tech company. In this role, she’s had the opportunity to lead a team of lab staff. Working with them helped her learn a lot about how to be an effective leader by connecting with and empowering others to research topics they are interested in. Anselmi’s desire to serve others in her leadership roles can also be seen in her own research. As a fan of BYU football and plant sciences, Anselmi uses drone images and agricultural technology from METER to study how the LaVell Edwards Stadium field changes under different water conditions. This helps improve athletic performance and ensures player safety. With the experiences she had at METER and guidance from Plant and Wildlife Sciences Professor Neil Hansen, Anselmi confidently mentors and leads a team of undergraduate students for this project.
“It's been a ton of fun,” Anselmi shared. “The undergrads are super into the research that I'm doing, and we even got little uniforms for our work on the field, the BYU overalls.”
Another way that Anselmi serves is through her position on the Graduate Student Council. Her unique blend of academic, social, and spiritual experiences has helped her flourish in this position and make a difference for many students.
Raised Catholic, Anselmi met missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while completing her bachelor’s degree at Colorado Mesa University and was baptized. In speaking about her faith in Jesus Christ, Anselmi said that for her, converting to the Church from Catholicism, “is like knowing about somebody versus knowing them.”
After being baptized, Anselmi worked hard to continue embracing her new faith in a place where there were few people who shared her beliefs. She later decided to continue her education at BYU. When she first arrived in Provo, it was a very different culture from what she was used to. Now, when Anselmi meets students who aren’t members of the Church, she has been able to help and connect with them.
One person who has consistently supported Anselmi through her time at BYU is Hansen. He helped shape Anselmi’s desire to “go forth to serve” with the skills she is developing.
“Dr. Hansen's whole view on research is to help people,” Anselmi shared. “He does research that people are going to want to read. So that's how I frame my writing and my research.” Anselmi has aligned her work with Hansen’s philosophy, always aiming to make her research practical and impactful. By approaching her work this way, she strives to ensure that her findings can be easily understood and applied by agricultural professionals and sports field managers alike. Through her leadership, research, and service, she continues to seek ways to make a meaningful difference—one project, one connection, and one act of service at a time.