JCPenney Leadership Program Summer 2020 E-News

As we are all settling into our summer routines, I want to reflect on this past year in the JCPenney Leadership Program. This year has truly been characterized by fellowship and our ability to persevere through a storm. It has been an absolute honor serving as Chair for the 2019-2020 school year. I am excited to highlight a few of our accomplishments over this past year and share how sincerely special my experience as Chair has been. 

One of our leadership’s primary goals for this year was engagement. We concentrated on creating events and content that our associates would be eager to attend and learn from, regardless of the requirements they satisfied. Additionally, we sought to provide greater opportunity for fellowship throughout the whole organization. With these two goals in mind, we revamped every program, from org meetings to peer trainer sessions, leading to the creation of some of my favorite events during my tenure in the JCPenney Leadership Program. Following the lead of our previous Chair, Erin Hyun, I took a special interest in designing exciting org meetings. A personal favorite of mine was our Donors Choose Sales Pitch Challenge. With only around 50 members present at this org meeting, I asked members to donate $1 or $2 to a fund to be donated to the school represented by the winning sales team. I was taken aback when our members donated over $160 to support other teachers and students. Their generosity, however, was somehow matched by their impressive teamwork and inspiring “sales pitches,” which resulted in a very difficult decision for our judging panel. Other favorite org meetings included a religion diversity panel, inner-outer circle and a case study with Deloitte. Overall, I found our members to be more engaged during org meetings, regardless of whether Qdoba was catered or not.

This year also marked the beginning of our Peer-to-Peer Mentorship Program. Led by Director of Peer Trainers Dani Nickell, and with additional help from Kaycee Chew and Dee Fogel, we kicked off this program in January at a roller-skating event sponsored by KPMG. The event provided an opportunity for our new associates to meet their new mentors and begin a relationship that would be maintained throughout the rest of the semester. Although the mentor program was disrupted by COVID-19, I am proud of the dedication of these mentors and mentees to continue their relationship while being physically removed from campus.
 

Through the collaboration of our Director of Peer Trainers, Director of Board Fellows and Director of Philanthropy, they successfully unified these three areas and engaged all our associates with our board organizations. Our Board Fellows, led by Mansi Patel, brought their mentor groups to a philanthropy event related to the board on which they serve. Our candidate associates gained exposure to our unique board fellow program and eventually presented on these nonprofits as part of their candidate associate requirements. Director of Philanthropy Fedi Kourbatov created volunteer opportunities related to our board organizations for the rest of our associates. I am extremely excited about this new structure, as it kept both our Board Fellows and their boards engaged in our program throughout the year.

Our co-Directors of Associate Development and Programming worked tirelessly to increase opportunities to attend fellowship events, including the addition of kickboxing, tennis lessons, intramural sports and informal networking. Programming focused on bringing greater diversity in the industry, size and location of the companies with which we engaged. We also held two in-person conferences this year that were extremely successful thanks to the efforts of Salma Morales and her team. 

This year brought many ups and downs for many of us. As a program, we chose to persevere through the storm, and I believe we will come out of the other side stronger. After adapting to life in quarantine, we have learned that it is possible to reach much further than we could have imagined. If someone were to have asked me in January if the Alumni Career Conference could be held virtually, I would have laughed and said, “of course not.” But thanks to Suzanna Dellinger, our Director of Alumni Relations for the spring 2020 semester, our members were connected to people halfway across the country from the comfort of their own homes. I think the JCPenney Leadership Program will be changed for the better after this year because we now know the global reach we can have through utilizing technology.  

I would like to thank the Student Advisory Board for their endless ideas of how to keep us connected during a time when we were separated more than we have ever known before. We held mentor meetings, lunch and learns with major corporations, two org meetings, created a survival guide, gave back, learned on LinkedIn and still got to say goodbye to our seniors. Thank you to everyone for staying engaged and helping this program and myself to reach our goals for the year. Thank you for adapting to the changes and meeting our new requirements. I am inspired by all of you and am thankful for the way you have challenged and bettered me as a leader and as a person. I will be forever grateful for my time as Chair of the JCPenney Leadership Program; it may not have been easy, but you all made it worth every minute. I am so excited to be passing down my title of Chair to Molly Thompson, who I am sure will do a fantastic job!

Our network of alumni and program supporters continues to be one of the most impressive features of our program, and we are excited to build our relationship with you. From engaging in one of the opportunities listed above to simply following our social media, we want to connect! We wish you the best and hope to hear from you soon!
 

Colleen Ward
BMacc/Finance
Class of 2020