Executive Mentor Meeting: Overall

The Executive Mentoring Program at Loyola offers a wide variety of information to Business students. The program helps give students the insight into life after college, the careers available. It also helps students build their skills like time management, finances and more. The program also helps develop connections for summer internships or later jobs. The mentors bring their groups to local companies to show how those companies do business (my mentor brought our group to Standard Coffee).

The experience that made the biggest impact on me was the meeting that was held at Standard Coffee. There was a retired Saints player who spoke about how he got through his first interview when he was thirty years old! There were two groups that got together for this meeting, Mr. Gueniot and our group and Ms. Taro Bello with her group. Our mentors talked about how different companies handled Hurricane Katrina. I left this meeting feeling more knowledgeable on Business information.

I do not feel that my expectations changed much from when I came into the program because I did not know what I was getting into. Having had this experience I gained a lot of appreciation for being able to have this experience. Only a handful of schools have programs like this and I feel very lucky to be able to be in a school that provides this program.

I would definitely recommend that other students find a program like this one. I would tell whoever is looking for an executive mentor to find one that is interested in similar things or offers opportunities in the field you want to go in to.

I'm really excited about the next semester and beyond at Loyola. I have learned so much during this semester through my class and the mentoring program. I look forward to new experiences with my mentoring group and new opportunities and projects for my business class.

If you are wanting to keep track of business new going on over the holiday break I would recommend Business Week and NY Times. Those are both of the sources I use. I did not realize how helpful Business Week was until I started reading it for class this semester.

I'm really excited about next semester and I look forward to blogging more. I had never heard of a class offering blogging as a form of homework, but I'm really glad Loyola's College of Business offers this. It offers me a somewhat informal type of homework and can help with future employment and internships.

Wolves on the Prowl

This Saturday, freshmen business students all attended Wolves on the Prowl a school community service project. The only other community service project I have done was during orientation and I did Green Light which is a program that replaces regular light bulbs with energy efficient ones. I really enjoyed doing the green light project so I was looking forward to this one.

There were a couple of choices of which community service project you could do. Sasha and I chose to do "Service starts in our own community". I chose this one because it sounded like a good way to get involved with the school. WFF is a custodial service that has been working at college campuses for 30 years! I love our WFF workers. They always keep everything really clean and are the nicest people. I work in the library and I've gotten to know a few of the workers there and they are awesome! I truly believe they deserve a nice break area.

This is the finished break room:

This room was the old WFF break room from what I heard but what happened was over the years with renovations it got overrun and unable to be used. Of coarse WFF workers are able to break anywhere but wanted to make them a room of their own to feel comfortable in. There were probably around 25-30 people in our group. We got rid of all the trash and old furniture. We also scrubbed the walls clean. I really wish I had some before pictures to compare with these! After everything was clean and we moved in new furniture, a bunch of us got together and made some posters for the wall to show how much we appreciated all that the WFF workers do for us. I really loved this experience and I hope the room is able to be put to good use.

Doing community dervice for my Intro to Business class reinforced my desire to do more community service. I have been looking into volunteering for HSUS Louisana (Humane Society of the United States) a program that fights animal cruelty and influences shelters to become no-kill shelters. They explain on their website that it is unknown to many people that many parishes don't even have basic facilities for homeless, sick or injured animals. HSUS is a company that has been around since 1953 helping to stop animal cruelty. I would love to volunteer to raise money for HSUS and awareness on animal cruelty.

Executive Speaker on Personal Finances

Today my group met up again with Mr. Gueniot.


First all the freshmen got together in my classroom and we discussed personal finances. This was really interesting to me as I just got my first credit card a month or so ago and I'm very new to credit scores. I learned about credit scores how you can get them up and the downfalls of when they go down. I'm definitely going to be very careful with my card, but I'm also going to use it to my advantage to get a good credit line going for myself.

Afterwards, my group got together upstairs. Well, I was there first and then realized everyone else was waiting for me.... Opps! Anyway, after that Mr. Guenoit spoke with us about out credit and helped with information on credit cards. I learned that only about four of us have credit cards in our name. He talked to us about how to pay off credit card bills best and to never just pay the minimum balance or we will never pay it off. I want to make sure I get and keep a good credit rating though I don't plan on using my credit card for anything that I can't pay for. I will also look into getting more credit cards to help my credit rating. I found this site helpful for finding more cards, it explains each cards benefits and is specifically tailored to students. I'm also looking at this one as it donates money to Farm Animal Sanctuary. I'm also generally pleased with the one I have now as it gives me rewards for the everyday things I buy and helps pay off my school loans.

I can't wait for my next meeting with Mr. Gueniot on the 23rd to see what else we will talk about.

CareerBeam Values and Vision

My Vision Statement:


My vision is that in four years I will graduate from Loyola with a management degree. After that I want to go to The Natural Gourmet School in NYC. To afford going there, I'm hoping to work at the school over the course of the program.

After my schooling I'll open my own vegan restaurant, I will get there by working at other similar restaurants until I can afford my own. This may be 4-5 years after I get out of culinary school. I'll run the business of the restaurant and help out in the kitchen and also help with customers.

The benefits of writing a vision statement were that I got a clearer connection with the major I'm taking and where I'm heading, I just became clearer with what I'm doing. I also had been worried about what I was going to do to pay for the Culinary School since I will already owe so much for the loans I already have. But as I was writing this assignment, I asked one of my other teachers Ms. Alyson and she came up with the idea of working at the school, which has made me feel more confident about what I'm doing.

I didn't think there would be many challenges to writing a vision statement but I was mistaken. By writing this I had to look deep inside myself and explain why I wanted to do what I'm doing. Which made me second guess myself, and to tell you the truth I still am. I want to do something that changed how the animals are being treated in factory farms and people's view on them. And the easiest thing I could think of was offering more animal-friendly food choices, but maybe I can do more. So I'm still thinking about it now. College is about finding yourself, right?





Values:

I did the value assessment on the career success page and found that my set of values were humanitarian, here is their definition:

Values: The Humanitarian Set :

• If your value type is Humanitarian, you are motivated by an environment that improves the lives of others, allowing you to be kind, sympathetic, warm and giving.


• This set values charity, unselfishness and the freedom of others and is apt to offer aid and assistance to others as well as understanding.


• The humanitarian set contributes to another's well-being. Acting for materialistic gain without first considering the consequences on other people is against your nature.

The value that is most important to me was probably charity, I feel that we can all afford to give to somebody else. We live in a world of innovations and throw-away things, if we look at what other people have and what we throw away daily, it's amazing! I try to slow down sometimes and figure out what I really need, look at the real cost of things.

On a daily basis I try to express my values as best as I can by being true to myself, I try to look at everyone's view on things, be fair and I try to learn as much as I can so I don't have a biased look on things.

The company that matches with my values and my vision most is Spiral Diner and Cafe. It's a vegan restaurant and bakery in Texas. This is their mission statement:

Spiral Diner & Bakery is a 100% vegan and mostly organic restaurant in the middle of “Cowtown” (Ft. Worth). In addition to always serving delicious vegan meals that appeal to both herbivores and carnivores, Spiral Diner pledges to:

• Use only cruelty-free and environmentally friendly biodegradable cleaning products
  Only purchase recycled and un-bleached paper products (with the highest post-consumer content available)


• Always buy Certified Organic ingredients whenever possible with conventional only as a last resort


• Use environmentally friendly, biodegradable take-away containers and disposable cutlery (we also encourage our customers to bring their own reusable containers with them to help us reduce packaging waste)


• Recycle 100% of all the accepted materials that come through our kitchen


• Donate a portion of profit to local grassroots organizations that are fighting for human, animal, and environmental causes


• Reduce waste by purchasing in bulk as much as possible and donating excess food to local food banks and shelters


• Never compromise on the above principles
  

A word on our prices:
Spiral Diner's prices are set as low as they can possibly go. Our goal is not to make tons of profit; it is to provide the community with tasty vegan food at a reasonable cost. Our goal is also to pay everyone working at Spiral a decent wage. We will never charge more than we absolutely have to in order to pay the bills.
So when you eat at Spiral you know you are getting high quality food from happy employees.
Additionally, we will continually to adjust our prices to reflect food costs. As organic ingredients go down in price we adjust our menu prices accordingly. The more in demand organics become, the lower the price.

I would love to work for a company like this, they think about other people first, they aren't in the business to make billions and take over the world, just serve good food and offer compassionate food choices. I feel like this is how things should be, doing what you want without harming other things. I would feel very comfortable and confident working somewhere like that.

Executive Mentor First Meeting

This past Friday I had my first meeting with my executive mentior, Mr. Brian Gueniot.

I was unsure of what it would be like, what we were supposed to do, if I would be bored, etc. But, I was pleasantly surprised. First everyone in Intro to Business met up in the classroom, and we went over the assignment and met all of the mentors. Then me and 6 other people separated with our mentor and we got together in a group upstairs.

I learned about Mr. Gueniot and his previous jobs, he even has his own business so I feel he may be able to help me with my goal of owning a restaurant. He even said he would bring someone in in that industry. Mr. Gueniot seems to know a considerable amount about the field of business, I feel confident that I will learn a lot.

I feel like the executive mentoring program will help me feel more comfortable in the major I am taking and have a greater insight into what the field is all about. I know that this will help me in the process of my career because of learning about so much, so early on and this will only increase the possibilities I have with future employers.

All in all, I can't wait for the next meeting and I'm excited about what will happen and what I can learn.