Executive Mentor Program

The Executive Mentor Program for the College of Business for freshmen at Loyola has many objectives. It helps open up student’s minds to different career paths and opportunities. It serves as a networking tool for students as well. The mentors also take students on fieldtrips, which lets us get a closer look at the business world.
The experience that resulted in the most value for me was a few weeks ago when me group and I went to a fundraiser that was being held at the office of my executive mentor’s rival company. My mentor, Eric Morgan, is in the marketing industry and at the fundraiser they were auctioning off various prizes to benefit a good cause. At the fundraiser we got the chance to meet a lot of important people in the New Orleans marketing industry as well as find out more about our mentor’s company and how they do business. We were able to sit down and talk with each of Mr. Morgan’s seven employees and hear about their jobs. They seemed like a lively and fun group of people, which really cleared up my misconception of successful people in the business world. I had a lot of fun at the fundraiser and for a brief moment even considered switching my major from international business to marketing!
My expectations of the mentor did change dramatically from the beginning of the semester to now. Towards the beginning I was a little skeptical of the program and expected nothing more than monthly meetings at school about business. Instead our mentor really took an interest in our lives as well as our education. Mr. Morgan even invited us to dinner at his house where we met his wife and one year old daughter. The program proved to be a lot more intimate and in-depth than I thought it would be.
I would tell them to pick someone who works in their field of interest so that they can give them specific guidance. I would also tell them to pick a mentor that is from or lived in the city they are in for a significant amount of time so that they are very familiar with the area.
Next semester I look forward to going to more functions with my mentor and learning more about the marketing industry. We also have a trip to his office planned for next semester as well as a visit to a casino, which is one of his clients.
Some websites I would recommend for my blog readers to look at to stay updated over the break would be; www.forbes.com, www.cnnmoney.com, and www.businessweek.com.

Wolves on the Prowl

I have to admit that the only reason I ended up at the Wilson Charter School was because of the additional five points offered to those of us who went. As we pulled up to the school and listened to the introduction given to us by the school’s administrators I began looking around at the school and letting my mind wander. It was not until after everyone began to clap and file into the school that I realized that I had missed the entire introduction. In retrospect, I really wish that I had paid attention as the principal of the school told the school’s story, because maybe then I would have realized the significance and impact that our work that day had. As I was researching the school to write this blog I found out that the neighborhood it had been in was devastated by Katrina and they lost their public school. In an effort to save the neighborhood and school Latoya Cantrell, a resident of New Orleans’ Broadmoor neighborhood, along with other members of the Broadmoor community started the Charter School where we volunteered.
I started out painting a wall (which had a considerable amount of mold on it), of a first grade classroom. Once we had finished painting the wall I came to the realization that because of the little time that my peers and I put aside to help, a group of first graders will have a clean classroom in which they can feel comfortable and breathe easily. Once we had finished the first coat of paint the teacher asked me to grade some tests for her. I was happy to help make her workload a bit lighter seeing as how there was a lot to be done at the school before the kids came back that Monday. After grading the papers we applied a second coat of paint. We then began making little story books for the kids by ripping out the stories from books and folding them.
I feel as though we were very productive on our trip to the Wilson Charter School but I do wish I knew what I know now about the school while I had been there. I feel as though the school stands for a lot more than just education, but for the strength and resilience of a community that had everything taken away from them but found a way to re-establish their community from the ground up.
One service organization that I have found compelling in the New Orleans area is ARNO: Animal Rescue New Orleans. ARNO is a grassroots volunteer organization dedicated to the rescue and aid of animals that have been displaced or abandoned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.