Southwest Licking School System

Tech Prep Students Explore Career Paths through Leadership Conferences

Some students, including WMHS seniors Sarah Taylor and Jeannie Hannah, have taken their exploration even farther by attending Leadership Conferences that help young people build confidence and capability well beyond their years.

"I was at Pace University in New York City for ten days, studying how businesses work," Sarah Taylor said of the Global Business and Entrepreneurship Leadership Conference she attended through the LeadAmerica organization.

"Then at the end we created our own products and did presentations for real investors. It was pretty fun."

Taylor plans to study accounting at the University of Cincinnati next year. "I have always loved math and working with numbers."

One highlight of the trip was a tour of the Federal Reserve Bank, during which the students visited the vaults where the gold reserves are stored, six stories below ground.

The conference offers participants two college credits, and students who follow up with local community service activities can earn points toward a scholarship, she added.

Her classmate Jeannie Hannah attended the National Youth Leadership Conference on National Security and Counterintelligence offered last October in Washington DC.

She originally had been interested in pursuing a military career, and credits her experience at the leadership conference with giving her additional insight into what such a career might look like.

"We had lots of guest speakers from the government-a spy talked to us, and a senior officer from the Air Force. At the end we did a simulation of a national crisis situation, and I could see how tough it is to make decisions under pressure like that," Hannah said. "It was interesting, but very stressful."

The participants toured Capitol Hill and visited the offices of the NSA (National Security Administration), and got a taste of what it was like to live in Washington, DC.

"Very expensive. And even though we were traveling on a bus, the traffic was really bad."

In the end, Hannah has decided to pursue a different career path entirely, and hopes to study culinary arts at Hocking College next year.

She credits the conference with giving her a new-found appreciation of the difficulties our country's leaders face when resolving international conflicts, but the high level of stress involved in such a career was not appealing to her.

"I like to bake and cook, and maybe one day I'll open my own business," she said.

Both students were nominated to be participants in the leadership conferences, but they were never told who had submitted their names.

For more information about the conferences, visit LeadAmerica's website at www.lead-america.org.