The 2009 Future Leaders Conference was open to the public at Bakersfield College providing keynote speakers, awards and workshops in leadership education Nov 7.
The two keynote speakers, chief executive officer of Aera Energy, Eugene Voiland and Criminal Defense Attorney David Torres, gave their own definitions of how leadership applies to each of them personally.
“I don’t think you could find two speakers who came together better,” said Jack Brigham, executive director of the Center for Kern Political Education. “What they were talking about is what it takes to be successful, the values you need, the role of inspiration in your life, etc.”
The students on the planning committee selected which community leaders they would like to see as keynote speakers, according to Brigham.
Brigham went on to say that he is extremely pleased with the way the conference turned out.
“This was designed for students who want to be leaders someday, [who want to] be involved in community positions.”
The speakers concluded with a short question-and-answer session in which students were able to gain insights about how the leaders make decisions and overcome obstacles.
After the question-and-answer session, students and professors were encouraged to choose two out of the available 10 workshops to attend over the next two hours.
“They got to prioritize what they wanted to attend,” said Brigham.
Leading a workshop discussing leadership in the media was Nader Alsheikh, who said, “There is a huge void in leadership in Kern County,” and he considered a conference like this to be “deeply valuable.”
“It was absolutely better planned than last year,” said Student Government Association senator Shawn Newsom, who helped out with the event this year and previous years.
BC communication and business administration major Kathy Hart, 40, felt the conference was good but a little disorganized.
“If everyone had fliers beforehand, it would have been better because they told you where to go for the workshops,” she said.
Hart went on to say that her favorite workshop included a role-play scenario that shows how a government works. “It was really cool, much more effective than a lecture,” she said.
Also attending the role-playing workshop was SGA President Kristi Newsom, who said it got the group involved in a kind of mock trial interaction, which was “not easy.”
According to Kristi, over 150 people signed up online for the conference, many of them high school students, but the conference happened to coincide with the SATs so many of them couldn’t make it. She would have liked to publicize more and get the word out.
“It would have been nice to have a little more time to focus on it after homecoming,” she said.
“The hardest part was getting a date that works extremely well for the community,” said Brigham. “And so that’s what we have to look at more carefully.”
“Our goal is for each of those students to come in and to be able to ask questions and to have a dialogue with established community leaders in different areas,” said Brigham.