Lainey Volz: Servant Leadership is in Style

Leadership Through Service and Growth

Lainey Volz exemplifies servant leadership through her approach to feedback, community building, and continuous learning during her summer apparel design internship at Victoria’s Secret PINK. Her journey demonstrates how servant leadership principles translate from academic settings to professional environments.

Overcoming the Feedback Challenge

Lainey’s most significant leadership growth has been learning to give constructive feedback—a challenge rooted in her natural “Woo” (winning people over) and positivity strengths. Initially, she feared that providing feedback would hurt feelings or single people out. However, her Caldwell Fellows experience taught her that effective feedback actually serves the team’s growth and strengthens relationships.

“My biggest challenge as a leader has always been communicating to a team member when something is going wrong and needs to be fixed, because I fear hurting someone’s feelings… Yet Caldwell has provided me experience where I have been able to provide feedback to team members and see how it betters my team, and how willing people are to accept feedback!”

This summer, she’s experiencing the other side of this dynamic. Her manager at Victoria’s Secret provides challenging assignments followed by constructive feedback, which Lainey has loved. This has showed her how receiving feedback “catapults growth.” This firsthand experience of being served through mentorship is helping her embrace giving feedback as an act of service rather than criticism.

This summer my fear of giving others feedback has been remedied by seeing how receiving feedback catapults my growth!

Servant Leadership in Action

At Victoria’s Secret PINK, Lainey demonstrates servant leadership by:

• Asking questions freely to better serve the team and the customers she designs for
• Embracing learning opportunities that challenge her comfort zone
• Focusing on the customer (designing for college students who love “the color pink, current trends, and sparkle”) and helping the team design size and ability inclusive garments 
• Supporting team collaboration through trend research and design presentations
• Approaching mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failures

Her successful Fall 2026 trend research presentation, where the team praised her understanding of their customer, exemplifies how servant leadership—putting the customer’s needs first—leads to meaningful impact.

“The team told me that I clearly understood our customer and that my ‘ideas are everything she (our customer) wants!'”

Key Lessons from Caldwell Fellows

The program has equipped Lainey with crucial leadership skills:

• Comfort with challenging conversations and clear, kind communication
• Mental endurance and self-confidence to tackle new scenarios
• Ability to navigate unfamiliar situations (from Tokyo public transportation to Manhattan subways)
• Intentional relationship building within diverse communities

“Caldwell Fellows has provided exposure to circumstances and conversations that challenge me. The program has built up my mental endurance and faith in myself that I am capable of tackling new scenarios or projects that come my way.”

The Power of Community and Mentorship

Lainey’s advice to incoming fellows—”Talk to everyone” and “go into every dinner and retreat intentionally”—reflects her understanding that servant leadership thrives in community. Her gratitude for her manager, whom she describes as “spectacular, kind, and innovative,” shows how being well-served prepares leaders to serve others effectively.

Talk to everyone. I truly think the Caldwell Fellows is a group unlike any where else. You are a part of such a vibrant beautiful community on campus, and it’s up to you how much you put in and engage with it.

Her internship experience, from attending fittings with models to communicating with international manufacturers, demonstrates how servant leadership scales up—whether serving a small team or designing for millions of customers. Through embracing imposter syndrome as “a rush of joy” and viewing each challenge as a growth opportunity, Lainey embodies the servant leader’s commitment to continuous development in service of others.

“Imposter syndrome is scary, but it always fills me with such a rush of joy. I ask a lot of questions, I work hard and give everything my all, and when I make a mistake, I learn from it so I’m better the next time.”