April 2017 – Melonie Butler, Founder of I Choose To Win, engaged nearly 100 student leaders at Penn State Abington with a message she entitled “In the Room, At the Table.” Invited by the Student Affairs Department and the Student Government Leaders, Butler customized her message to speak primarily to graduating seniors drawing parallels for student leaders to see the correlation of student leadership to business leadership.
The message was to remind the outgoing seniors to not only be in the room, but at the table where decisions are being made and there is an opportunity to influence those decisions through their demonstration of excellence in their knowledge areas and mastery of soft skills, such as communicating with confidence, art of persuasion and emotional intelligence, that will elevate them and afford new opportunities. A message Butler drove home was to “never compromise or abandon your truth, never shrink nor withhold your unique contributions and to boldly share differing perspectives as these could cause you to be the difference-maker or change-agent that VERY room needs.”
Afterwards, Butler remained available to engage in one-on-one conversations with the students and enjoy fun photo opportunities, as shown below.