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.