Students gain leadership skills at annual Summit

Jon Lehan was required to attend Saturday’s Panther Leadership Summit, but he said he would have come anyway. 

“I still find it very beneficial to come and learn from people who have been successful in the real world,” Lehan, the executive board director of the Pitt Program Council, said. 

Pitt’s annual Panther Leadership Summit was held Saturday, with hundreds of students converging in various locations in the William Pitt Union to listen to speakers, attend workshops and develop leadership skills.

Lehan, a junior majoring in finance, attended last year’s Summit and said he thinks this year’s event was very successful in regard to its planning and speakers.

At the summit six speakers delivered snappy, eight-minute presentations on various topics tailored to their fields of expertise.

Jim Earle, the ssistant vice chancellor for business at Pitt, kicked off the presentations with a segment called “Be Your Own CEO.” 

In this case, CEO stood for Chief Enthusiasm Officer.

Earle spoke about the importance of enthusiasm in the workplace, citing specific anecdotes of real-life CEOs who he has encountered.

“Do it with pizzazz,” he said, smiling. “Make it special, and people will follow you.”

Other speakers included Roger Whyte, who founded his own event production company called RJ Whyte Event Production based in Washington, D.C., and Terrance Hayes, a poet and English professor at Pitt. Pitches and Tones, a Pitt-based a cappella group, also made an appearance and performed to demonstrate a different way of leading by finding one’s voice.

Gabrielle Glenn, a senior majoring in accounting and finance, felt the speakers all presented well, but noticed that not every presenter mirrored Earle’s enthusiasm. 

“[Earle] talked about having enthusiasm, and some of the speakers didn’t have that, which was kind of disappointing,” Glenn, who attended the summit for the first time, said.

After the presentations, most of the speakers took part in Q-and-A sessions with students in various rooms in the William Pitt Union. Students asked general questions about the speakers’ experiences in their respective fields.

Following the Q-and-A sessions and a lunch break, attendees participated in breakout sessions around the building, which covered different areas of leadership.

Breakout sessions featured discussions of areas such as self-care in the workplace, conflict resolution and how to communicate effectively as a leader.  

Glenn said she looked forward to attending a session called “Things I Wish I Would Have Known in College,” led by Eric Harvey, CEO of YourTalentAgents.com, a website that helps to match graduating college students with jobs.

During the session, Harvey discussed tips for transitioning from school to work and what students can do to stand out from the crowd to get a better job.

Lehan said he enjoyed the summit and that it will help him and anyone who attended in life after college.

“[The summit] will take what you learned in your student organizations and what you learned at Pitt and help in transferring that to the real world,” he said.