PUBLICATIONS
THE ATRIUM WITH SHEILA DELUCA
Sheila DeLuca’s leadership journey began in 2012 when she fell in love with a vision, a dream, a goal, and a plan. She says, “This is about a love story. This is my love story, a true romantic battle.” When she read an article in one of the Niagara magazines at the time that discussed a situation that has been looming over Niagara Falls for many, many years she knew her vision would come to a reality. After reading the first line of the interview conducted in the article, she saw the potential, and she saw the opportunity to build bridges and make connections to grow Niagara Falls.
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Sheila DeLuca was Sheila Fleming at the time and a secondary school teacher at Saint Paul Catholic High School, in Niagara Falls, where she currently teaches. She was not a stranger to learning about her civic duty to leadership, volunteering, working on committees, and working with like-minded people to get a job done. Sheila Fleming did not marry to change to her last name, she grew into the most fragrant and heavenly rose on the Award of Excellence property for the Summer Trillium program. Summer Trillium is a subcommittee of the Park and the City committee that is appointed by members of Niagara Falls City Council, in which she sits as a member. With years of personal growth, learning about and understanding her family history, she decided to take on her family name, the only one she knew. One could say it was a journey of divine intervention, one filled with hope, optimism, and positivity, but also one filled with loss, grief, broken relationships, and the biggest ones of all heartache and sickness. However, with a whole lot of faith and a whole lot of love, perseverance became her middle name. For she fell in love with a vision, a passion, a dream, and a plan, that would seem like a fantasy to most people. This became her true north, one she never wavered from. DeLuca became her last name, not delusional.
Always serving, always learning, always growing, Sheila never stopped smiling even during the most difficult times. Protecting her mind, heart, and body and keeping it all healthy was her number one priority. The words from someone she looked up to, always rang silently in her heart to keep her going just one more day, “Be well Wonder Woman” and “No, don’t cry.” It was during a most difficult storm she learned about an unconditional and a selfless love, as well as an unconditional respect and trust for a dream larger than herself to come to pass. She knew she was being pruned to become the woman she was meant to be. Sheila learned to take the gift of laughter and to enjoy and love life. When you laugh at the good things and the bad you begin to feel the love life really has to offer.
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Sheila quoted a line from the book “The Ultimate Gift” by stating that, “The gift of passions, dreams, and goals are the are the outward manifestations of the love we feel inside. When we have the generous gift of giving, you are giving out of love and both the giver and the receiver have more than what they started with.” However, one cannot get to this point in their thinking and understanding until the focus of self is taken off selfishness. Ego must be replaced with a calm plan, smart work, trust, and an unwavering belief. This is a daily exercise to feed the mind and the soul with living above circumstances, no matter what they are since circumstances cannot be controlled, and instead trust the process, embrace the struggle, and ultimately celebrate the victory.
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During this time of new experiences and challenges we all want to have a searchlight that will brighten a large area that business owners and entrepreneurs, innovators, employees, families, men and women, students and children are all struggling with, but rather it is the flashlight that will illuminate just enough of the path ahead to show us all where to take the next few steps, with it never being revealed all at once.
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In partnership with The Business Link, DeLuca Leadership will be hosting a 10-episode program called The Atrium. The purpose of The Atrium is to cultivate the growth mindset of the citizens of Niagara to encourage healthy thinking, healthy education, and healthy people. On the program, we have gathered the top business leaders and critical thinkers whose word matches their actions because that is what we need now and next, action.
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The focus here will not be on the pain, the despair, and the loss of Covid-19, but instead on the rising again to the healing and the hopefulness for a bright future in our communities of great opportunity for those who want it, those who want to change, and for those who want to adopt.
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Sheila would like to think Covid-19 brought us into Connection 20 that will last for generations to come. Our intention is to allow for the conversations on The Atrium to be open and genuine regarding where we go from here and what matters most while growing from the lessons we all learned during a challenging time and to come out stronger and more united. Stay tuned there is more to come, you will not want to miss our first guests.
