New Initiative, Leadership 102, Participants Visit Verizon Headquarters in Basking Ridge, NJ
One of the most wonderful aspects associated with the Leadership Development Honors Program is the entrepreneurial spirit that each student is highly encouraged to tap into. As future leaders, our students understand the importance of innovation and the impact new ideas have on both their peers and on an institution as a whole. This is exactly what Anthony Pescetto (Junior), Brian Mitchell (Junior), and Vina Tailor (Sophomore) took the initiative to accomplish last year. They proposed the creation of the aptly named Leadership 102 framework.
Leadership 102, named as a natural progression of the Leadership 101 freshmen workshop, is aimed to “grow and develop our leaders in this program through exposure to business culture, interaction with executive leaders, and sample case studies.” It has created an opportunity for students to visit well-established, prominent companies and actively participate in its infrastructure. The initiative leaders were able to contact Advisory Council Member, John Boylan, Director of Human Resources at Verizon, to make this a reality. After a successful beta test, Leadership 102 is well underway as it just completed its first visit to the Verizon headquarters in Basking Ridge, New Jersey this past Friday, January 16th!
Students participating in the interactive Verizon MAP Activity
Seven LDHP students accompanied our founding members. They were greeted warmly by Mr. Boylan and his team that morning. Anthony, Brian, and Vina collaborated with these same Verizon executives in order to make the agenda for the day’s visit. The first activity the students participated in was the Verizon MAP Activity where they were able to immerse themselves into the company’s culture. It gave them the opportunity to interactively learn from actual orientation techniques the company uses to give its employees a deeper understanding of who they work for.
Followed by the MAP Activity, the group took a tour of the beautiful facilities. As the group returned to its original meeting place, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Fran Shammo, greeted the team as everyone settled in for a short dialogue. Mr. Shammo shared the insights from his career journey and stayed to answer personal questions from students looking to further themselves in their own careers.
The Leadership team with Verizon business executives including CFO Fran Shammo.
(From L to R) John Boylan, Deniz Yalcin, Brian Mitchell, Deane Franco, Danielle Andreani, Fran Shammo, Zach Blackwood, Amanda Sulkosky, Vina Tailor, Anthony Pescetto, Noel Girgenti, Sumera Munhaf, and Claudia Healy
Immediately after, Advisory Council Member Claudia Healy, Vice President of Talent Acquisition, led an exciting conversation with the team about who each of them are individually and how each should embrace his or her strengths. Getting to know themselves was the core learning experience that will directly attribute to their future successes. Finally, the day concluded in the afternoon with the Challenge. Our students were divided into teams and tackled an exercise used as a hiring technique. After the time for the Challenge came to a close, students gave brief presentations of their work.
The opportunity to visit and speak with so many renowned business executives gave our students a glimpse of what is to come after graduation. In an open environment that values the future generation of workers, all were able to benefit by the different perspectives in the room. We would like to thank John Boylan, Erica Stacey, Anali Lins, Fran Shammo, Claudia Healy, Michael Louie, and Sohni Bhandutia for gratiously accepting the LDHP members and giving them an opportunity that provided rich, irreplaceable learning! Congratulations as well to Anthony, Brian, and Vina!
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