'Leadership is a Privilege' (BDPA St. Louis)

by Guest Blogger: Dwana Franklin (BDPA St. Louis)

BDPA St. Louis hosted its April 2013 program meeting at the Monsanto headquarters office. The chapter presented a panel discussion on “Leadership is a Privilege” facilitated by Vincent Shorter (director, Monsanto). The panelist included Fred Burdell (chief information officer, Emerson Industrial Automation), Teron Bowman (IT Manager, Lord & Taylor) and Fabiana Solari (middleware services lead, Monsanto). There were 30 people in attendance for this very successful networking and educational seminar.

The session introduce some of the benefits of leadership - including driving growth and change in your organization; developing others; challenging teams to go beyond their personal and group boundaries; and helping others to realize pride in accomplishment. Vincent led with views and different perspectives of leadership and then enthusiastically moderated the panel of diverse IT professionals. The discussion was interactive and insightful between the attendees and panelists.

At the end of the session time was allotted for networking, and everyone left the meeting with a minimum of one new contact to add to their network.

Some of the comments shared on the meeting evaluations included:

"It was truly a privilege to participate as a panel member for this event. I appreciated the opportunity and also enjoyed networking and learning from others in the IT community."

"It was a pleasure participating in the event last night. I really enjoyed the professional atmosphere and dialogue with the facilitator, my panel members, and the BDPA members."

"The networking at the end was awesome as well. The room was buzzing with all the chatter!!! It was a beautiful thing."

"I thought it was a very engaging, empowering, and enlightening session! Thank you for being wonderful hosts, enthusiastic panelists, and more importantly, great representatives of professionalism...substance...and style!"