Spring 2025 Student Leadership Conference
February 28, 2025 ♦ 9:00AM (8:15 registration) - 3:00 PM ♦ Robert F. Hatcher, Sr. Conference Center
The MGA Student Leadership Conference is a free event for current students to network and connect with other students interested in developing as leaders. The conference will help you develop skills necessary for student leadership positions on campus, and professional and community leadership roles by participating in sessions that introduce new ideas, challenge ways of thinking, and empower you to make a difference .
Student registration for the spring 2025 Student Leadership Conference is now open! To register, click here.
If you have never been to a professional conference before, click here for some tips to get the most out of it.
Keynote Speaker: Ben Hoyer
Ben Hoyer is the founder and director of Downtown CREDO, a social-enterprise focused on improving quality of lives by cultivating networks of meaning, impact, and community. CREDO operates a coffee roasting enterprise; leads CREDO Conduit, a coworking society convening Orlando's creative class; and facilitated the emergence of two innovative non-profits. The net effect of these efforts is a bourgeoning network of people from all levels of affluence taking up lives of meaning, impact, and community.
Keynote Presentation: Leading with ConvictionGreat leaders are not magicians skillfully wielding tricks and techniques to manipulate people into following them. Great leaders are people of passion who’ve uncovered personal convictions, connected it to tangible action and are willing to go first. This is true of leadership in any sphere: fraternal, professional and among friends.
Almost ten years ago, in a moment of clarity, Ben committed to uncovering the sort of conviction that would move him to action. Eventually, that took shape in his credo.
In this presentation you’ll hear the story of that credo and how it instigated a journey from Orlando to the rugged mountains of Guatemala and back again. You’ll hear about how it propelled Ben to start regular trash clean ups in his neighborhood, to start, own and operate four name-your-price coffee shops along with a coffee roaster, even to launch a social enterprise accelerator and a co-working space. But most of all you’ll be challenged to consider what your core-conviction is and how you are connecting that conviction to action.
As a result of this program students will:
Understand a simple process to pinpoint their own key values.
Learn the importance of acting on those values.
Learn strategies for connecting their values to organizational goals, and
Learn where great coffee comes from (of course)
Plenary Speaker: Raven Scott
Raven Scott is a speaker, facilitator, workshop leader and leadership coach that believes in empowering individuals and teams to live well, work together, show compassion and empathy, and grow as people. She is the founder of Chasing Light Collective and the Training Ground; two programs that support women in their personal discernment, wellness, and leadership and team/tribe building through workshops, retreats, volleyball camps, and other engagements. Raven has spent her career educating in a variety of settings, including serving as Director of Leadership and Character in Athletics at Wake Forest University, teaching and coaching high school in Jackson, Mississippi, teaching English in Madrid, Spain, and developing leadership workshops and social emotional learning curriculum for Strive: How You Lead Matters, a sports leadership non-profit. Raven holds an M.A. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Mississippi and is a certified Higher Education Leadership Coach through Rice University’s Doerr Institute. Raven will be the Plenary Speaker for the 2025 Student Leadership Conference and will be facilitating one of the break-out sessions.
Employers are invited to participate in the conference as a sponsor of the Networking Luncheon. Various sponsorship levels provide increased engagement with students at one of the spring career fairs and the Student Leadership Challenge. Learn about our sponsorship options and contact us for more details. We work with each organization to ensure that their engagement needs match the career and leadership development needs and interests of students.
For spring 2025 the conference will take place on February 28 from 9:00AM to 3:00 PM ( registration starts at 8:15 AM) at the Robert F. Hatcher, Sr. Conference Center . This year's conference theme is character in leadership and the focus is on helping students understand how developing strong, positive character can improve their leadership . All students are a part of the MGA community and by attending this conference, you will develop a greater sense of how to contribute as an active member of the university and in the world around you. Transportation will be provided for Cochran and Eastman students, leaving from Sanford Hall in Cochran at 7:30AM.
Check back frequently since the page will be updated with more details about the conference's keynote and breakout speakers as we get closer to the conference date.If you are curious about topics that have been covered in past conference, click on the links below.