Alumni Come Back to the Classroom for Leadership and Ethics Day
Each year, Rockhurst University come back to campus for a different kind of homecoming.
As part of the annual Leadership and Ethics Day Tuesday, more than two dozen alumni leaders served as substitute teachers in the College of Business and Technology, with lessons drawn from their real-world experience to give current students a look at the moments that shaped their careers and their leadership.
“This is what is really cool about these presentations,” said Zdenka Guadarramma, Ph.D., professor of mathematics, in introducing Katie Killen, ’09, director of advocacy and community collaboration at Habitat for Humanity of Kansas City. “We get to see alumni and see the different paths that people take as they graduate from Rockhurst.”
Killen talked about the bell tower on the Rockhurst campus, saying its inscription, combined with her experiences as a student, shaped a career that took her from public administration to law school and now to Habitat for Humanity, where she advocates for affordable housing and fair housing policy. Through the pandemic and the changes in her career, Killen said she has tried to keep the value of courage in mind. She encouraged the students to do the same wherever they go after graduation.
“It might not be as poignant as the courage to stand in a room where people are angry at you and speak the truth,” she said. “But really reflect, as you're moving up through your time at Rockhurst, what are those experiences that can help you really flex that muscle of courage? I really think in this world that we are in, this moment that we are in, courage is going to be such a vital leadership trait.”
Edgar Palacios, ’11 MBA, gave students some group work that also touched on courage. Presenting to a fundamentals of communication course, he walked through a recent, real-life experience of his, during which he addressed the Kansas City Kansas Public School Board in Spanish. They discussed the exchange and the response and debated whether Palacios was an effective communicator. He said his work as the founder of the advocacy group Revolución Educativa, has taught him invaluable lessons about the power of communication, but he added his core values ultimately drive his approach.
“One of my fundamental beliefs is that there's a human on the other side. Whether I like you or not, you're still a human, and I want to treat you with dignity,” he said. “And so I'm mindful of the words that I say. I'm mindful that I’m not just representing myself, but I'm representing my organization, I'm representing my community, I'm representing a whole other group of people that I'm not even aware of.”
Clarke Fry, ’12, ’13 MBA, is a marketing manager at Garmin. He shared five things we wished he knew earlier in his career to a marketing analytics course, including the enduring power of human judgment even in the era of artificial intelligence and data-driven decision-making.
“A lot of times you will be making decisions in the grey, and you have to get used to that,” he said. “It takes experience, and you want to make sure you know what you’re talking about when you’re making those decisions, but very rarely in my career have I ever found that I get presented data and it’s very obvious what to do with that.”
