“Challenge is preparation.”
“The most impactful leadership is leveraging and encouraging other people’s creativity.”
“Great leaders don’t let setbacks define them; they use them as fuel.”
Those were some of the nuggets of wisdom Grand Canyon University students gleaned from the Next Generation Leadership Conference, “Forging Fire.”
The conference, centered around Sunset Auditorium on Saturday, was a deep dive into leadership for the more than 200 students attending the event, led by Ingram Honors College students in the Leadership in Action Fellowship.
Attendees not only heard from speakers, such as the principal engineer at Disney Streaming and a former professional baseball player, but they took professional headshots, attended a career fair and heard from a GCU alumni panel.
“How many of you have an elevator pitch? By the end of today, we all have to have an elevator pitch,” said Judah Floyd to his fellow students from the Sunset Auditorium stage.
It’s been a big week for the incoming student body president, who not only helped lead the conference but spoke at a press conference earlier in the week announcing the Honors College’s new name, the Sheila and Mike Ingram Honors College.
Floyd already had a takeaway from the event after the opening keynote talk: “Knowing that adversity and challenges help refine you into a better you.”
Forged by fire
The idea that adversity makes you stronger was a cornerstone piece of Patrick Fitzhugh’s opening address.
The USAA regional site director had a tough childhood. He was raised in west Phoenix by a single mom dependent on disability checks. They lived just a mile and a half from GCU, and Fitzhugh remembers passing the university often, thinking, “People like me don’t go to places like that.”
“I didn’t grow up in a home built on stability and structure,” he said, and by the time he was in high school, he felt independent. But looking back, what he saw as independence then was neglect.
What he has come to learn is that, in those hard times, “God was preparing me.”
God prepares us, he said, like a swordsmith takes a piece of raw metal, unrefined and full of impurities, puts it through fire, exposes it to heat and pressure, and transforms it into something that can hold an edge, withstand stress and hold a purpose.
Fitzhugh joined the Air Force in 2003, serving as a survival instructor. And as a civilian contractor deployed overseas in rescue and recovery during Operation Iraqi Freedom, he saw the horrors of war.
After being around so many who died in the war, he left his military life behind and returned home to build something different for himself.
Fitzhugh said he found success in his career, but as his paycheck grew, his purpose shrank. What he came to realize is that “no amount of money is worth my soul” and that “success can make you impressive, but only purpose can make you fulfilled.”
Despite the hardships in his life, Fitzhugh said, “Remove hate from your heart and learn to forgive … That has been the biggest struggle in my life.”
He spoke about his faith and told students, in a world where people live for the next 15 minutes, have an “eternal mindset” and make sure their professional lives align with their faith.
When a student asked him how comfortable he is talking about his faith in a professional setting, he said he used to be terrified to do it. But now, he will share his faith, even if it means losing his job.
He told GCU students that, like him, they will walk into fires in their lives but those fires – those adversities – don’t have to destroy them. Those challenges will shape them.
“You are not being consumed by the fire, you are being forged,” he said.
Leading with creativity
Breakout session speaker Michael Luttrell, a musician, hardcore lifelong learner and principal engineer at Disney Streaming, spoke about embracing change and creativity and how they play into leadership.
Luttrell wanted to become an electronics engineer but had an existential crisis. He hitchhiked to Arizona and became a poet, then to Chicago and became musician, playing with blues idols like Buddy Guy.
But after becoming a father, he knew he had to focus.
He knew how to write code so attended a technical school and, after three months, was hired by the state. He didn’t know as much as the person who hired him thought he did.
So Luttrell started learning as much as he could. It was exhilarating, he said.
“I literally outworked everyone. It was really this embracing change, and how do you embrace change and how does that lead to creativity?”
Luttrell spoke about teaching himself Spanish – “My Duolingo streak is 3,000 days,” he said. When he had a chance to work at the AOL Paris office in a previous job, he took every French course he could at the public library. And he knows numerous computer languages.
Whatever he was learning, he practiced over and over.
People have told him, “I wish I played guitar that good.” He tells them, “Don’t watch TV; practice.”
His advice to students: “Keep yourself learning constantly” and at the forefront of change, especially in industries like his, where change comes quickly.
“Another thing that allowed me to stay ahead was my weird approach to leadership,” Luttrell said. “ … What I’m doing now at Disney is supporting others’ creativity.”
Leadership for him is less about managing people and more about encouraging their creative side: “The most impactful leadership is leveraging and encouraging other people’s creativity.”
Don’t let setbacks bench you
John Straka, regional claims manager at Federated Insurance, spoke about not letting setbacks derail you.
The former professional baseball player had a coach who locked him and his fellow teammates out in the cold before letting them back into the gym, only to make them run two miles in 14 minutes.
“If you showed even a flicker of pain, you earned two more laps,” Straka said. “It was the first inning of a nine-inning conditioning gauntlet.
“He wanted us to understand, your mind is more powerful than your circumstances,” Straka said, and that we might not control everything, but we can control our mindset.
Straka shared a story about a teammate, a pitcher named Boomer, who lost his confidence, and for more than two years, he couldn’t overcome his mental blocks. His coach told him he could remain on the team if he accepted a position as a bullpen catcher, who helps pitchers warm up before taking the field.
Others would have quit; Boomer didn’t.
He became the team’s biggest cheerleader and, 14 weeks into a 16-week season, had the opportunity to play in a game. He hit a double, which fueled his teammates.
Boomer propelled the team to the championship.
Even more impactful: He led where he was at, Straka said.
Straka also spoke about his own challenges, when he didn’t get several jobs he applied for. But he kept trying and landed his current position.
“If I would have shrunk … I would have missed it,” he said.
He also shared that if you fail at something, approach that failure by saying, “good.”
“It (failures) are an opportunity to develop,” he said, adding, “Great leaders don’t let setbacks define them; they use them as fuel.”
Saturday’s leadership conference also featured speakers Patrick Lowndes, CEO of Frontier Operators and Pragma Advisors; Bob Seale, co-founder of Topography Consulting; and Emily Hutcheson, CEO of V’s Barbershop.
The conference wrapped up with an alumni panel that featured Emma Blair, policy advisor for the Arizona State Senate; Quyen Phan, co-founder and design engineer for ONYX Design and Manufacturing in Phoenix; and Weston Smith, founder and CEO of GCU-based Lux Precision Manufacturing.
Abby Hugghins, a business management and honors student, said she was excited to attend the conference because, “I was drawn to the fact that the students were helping plan it.”
Students like Jeanie Hunt, director of the Professional and Leadership Development Committee for the Ingram Honors College’s Leadership in Action Fellowship. She spearheaded the planning of the conference.
Hunt, a finance and economics senior, said student organizers, through personal contacts, found the impactful speakers who spoke at Saturday’s event.
Keawe Tolentino heard about the conference from the president of GCU’s Asian Pacific Islander Club. His big takeaway: “Be true to yourself.”
And student body president Judah Floyd hopes he’ll have one other takeaway: a strong elevator pitch.
Manager of Internal Communications Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected].
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