Ms. Libby Jordan

Our speaker today was the Director of Cultural Tourism and a member on the Board of Trustees of UNA. I really liked what she had to say as it seemed to relate not only to the business world but throughout different realms of jobs. She started off by telling us a story about how every one has value, and we shouldn't look down on people. In keeping with a theme that we would learn throughout her talk, she had a personal story for this ideal, this one about a trip to Dairy Queen with her children and seeing some other customers while there.
From there she went on to talk about how we are all salespeople and we our selling our image to the world, every minute of every day. After a few more personal stories about business decisions that she has made over the years and how good honest business decisions have been better than the shadier decisions that have snaked their way in.
She showed some statistics that pointed out some semi-positive sides of cheating and then reminded us that is we give in to that, it would be easier for us to give in on bigger, and much worse things. She explained a difference between Legality and Ethics and how they don not always line up. In the end she said Be true to yourself, do what you think is right because it is the right thing to do.

Dr. Wes Desselle

Dr. Desselle is a surgeon at Helen Keller Hospital and owns a small practice in Muscle Shoals and he talked to us about practicing medicine. He told us about some pros and cons of the profession and then told us the story of how he decided to go into that field. He went on to talk about the Human Values of mentor-ship, perseverance  and trust as they pertain to medicine before ending up with "Always cherish your family members."

William Lee

William Lee was a commercial Farmer that came to talk to us during Forum last week. He was a really nice guy and I liked that he was different from our other speakers. Mr. Lee talked to us about many misconceptions that people had about farming and how he uses technology in his business. It really surprised me when he said that he only had 4 employees working his fields which went back to how technology has improved his ability to grow crops cheaply and efficiently. One thing that truly impressed me was the fact that he is working on ways to farm in a more environmentally friendly manner, without cutting the yield of crop.

Chuck Berry

This past week in forum we got to hear from the father of an honors student and the CEO of Shoals Hospital, Mr. Ross Berry. Mr. Berry started off the talk by telling us the story of two kids that grew up on the same street and how one went on to be very successful while the other still works at a dead end job. The moral of the story was that it doesn’t matter where you come from or what is given to you that gets you ahead in life, it is the determination to do what you need to do to move up. The story is also completely true, with our successful pilot chuck turning out to be the Mr. Berry in front of us. He then went on to tell us about his personal mission statement and his motto. Both of these were really neat because he said he lived by these. He also encouraged us to make our own and I have been thinking about it. For my mission statement I really like the ARMY LDRSHIP values and I think I’ll keep those for a bit. And as for my motto I really liked his and think that it would be very useful. “Vera Verum Va Vera Causa” which he said roughly translates tok “Do the right thing, the right way, for the right reason”