Marching Off the Map

This summer was full of firsts for me  - my first long-term stay outside of Illinois, first job working full-time hours, first time making an hour long commute (thanks to Atlanta traffic), and of course my first meal from Chick-fil-A. You could say, I was personally "marching off the map" - a phrase I learned from Dr. Tim Elmore, the founder, and president of Growing Leaders.

Welcome to the office!

Growing Leaders, for the first time, had an Event Planning Intern this summer. I was lucky enough to fill this position, and I enjoyed every moment of it. To give you some background on the organization, Growing Leaders is a non-profit that focuses on leadership training and development. Through engaging events and resources, Growing Leaders equips the next generation with real-life leadership skills.

 Growing Leaders serves schools, universities, sports teams, businesses, churches and more. The overarching goal of Growing Leaders is to equip one percent of the world’s youth population (25 and under) to be leaders.  This one percent amounts to about 30 million students!

Habitudes curriculum for sale at NLF

Although Growing Leaders produces a variety of resources, the most recognized is certainly the Habitudes curriculum. Habitudes uses memorable images to teach leadership habits and attitudes. The curriculum has been utilized by over 8,000 organizations worldwide.

Now, that you have a bit of background, it's much simpler for me to explain my role with Growing Leaders this summer. To start off I was given a variety of tasks such as editing Habitudes keynotes, analyzing data on world youth populations, and making phone calls to invite people to come to the National Leadership Forum. 

The main NLF ballroom

The National Leadership Forum was, by far, the biggest event of the summer. The forum is an annual two-day conference in June that provides a research-based discussion on how to effectively lead today’s students. Although I was working for most of the conference, I did get to sit in and listen to some of the speakers. As a future educator, I found myself energized by not only the presenters, but the enthusiastic teachers, coaches, and other mentors in the room.

In addition to NLF, I was able to join both Dr. Elmore and Vice President of Growing Leaders, Holly Moore for some of their other speaking engagements in the Atlanta area. At these events, I helped with details such as tech set up and merchandise sales.  These trips are some of my best memories from the internship because I was able to see both students or mentors excited to better the millennial generation, and those that will follow us.

My overall favorite part of my internship was working with the Growing Leaders team members.This summer I had the chance to work alongside passionate leaders, many of whom are millennials, that are incredibly driven to equip the next generation with leadership skills. Through this experience, I gained a new perspective on myself, my age group and our world as a whole. I would highly recommend this internship to anyone who is interested in growing themselves both personally and professionally. Growing Leaders is a one of a kind organization that will show you what it means to "march off the map."