The Summit

Every January, Brigham Young University hosts and puts on a huge leadership conference called the BYU Leadership Summit. This conference is all about leadership and has motivational speakers, activities, food, and service projects for two days. I have been every year, and it gets better and better each year.

You must register online or at the door. If you register in December, tickets are up to half off making them between $5-10. This is an awesome deal for what you are paying for! You can volunteer as well which gets you free admission into the conference.

This year, the Summit was about journeys to leadership. There were several speakers who each told their personal journey about how they came to be a leader and what lessons they learned along the way.

My favorite speaker was the first speaker of the conference. He told about his journey in Africa with helping developing countries. He met many people and was able to connect and help them. He was able to figure out what would be best for these people and develop new products that would make a difference. Even today, he still supports developing countries in Africa and continues to visit each year to check up on innovation ideas and make a difference. I really enjoyed listening to each speaker. Each journey was unique but each story was connected. Leadership requires a joint effort on everyones part. You must be inspired to make a difference as a leader.

The speakers included Liz Wiseman, Art Rascon, Carine Clark, Sean Reyes, Jared Ward, Michael Jensen, and Lori Wadsworth. I also really enjoyed Carine Clark’s motivational speech. She is a cancer survivor and she mentioned that she has a new outlook on life now which has changed her leadership style. She was close to death, and realized that she needed to make a difference before her time was up.

She also realized that life is not worth living if she lets others upset and offend her. She said that it is critical to pretend you have a super power that you wont get offended by what others say. If you let that happen, you can accomplish anything because you have taken away the limits that would otherwise prevent you from making a difference.

The conference started on a Friday evening. There were 3-4 speakers and then a dinner break. Dinner was about an hour and was provided by BYU Catering which always has amazing food! I was not able to stay for dinner, but I believe my friend said it was a chicken salad with bread rolls. Then there was some musical performances by BYU singers and instrumentalists. The evening finished with a few more speakers and a networking activity. Saturday was more speakers as well as a lunch. Then there was a mini service project in the Hinkley Center following the conference. The BYU Leadership Summit is very cool and similar to Ted Talks. It is a great way to network with successful business people who are mostly BYU Alum, but not all are.