8th Annual Kellogg-DFW Career & Leadership Symposium is a Huge Success!

I’m proud that our Kellogg Alumni Club of Dallas/Fort Worth continues to outdo itself every year with events like the Career & Leadership Symposium held last weekend on February 16th at the SMU Collins Executive Education Center.

The event drew more than 200 attendees including representation from more than 30 MBA programs.  Attendees had the chance to attend 2 different breakout sessions in ‘Career’, ‘Leadership’ and ‘Venture’ tracks.

For me, it’s always a great chance to meet new people and I never fail to learn something new from the great speakers we manage to attract.  I also tried my hand at “live-tweeting” the event for the club this year under our @KelloggDFW twitter account, and we managed quite a few tweets under the #kcs hashtag this year.

Hopefully all attendees got a lot out of the day!

Kellogg-DFW Career Symposium 2012

Our 7th Annual Kellogg-DFW Career Symposium was a huge success!   We had nearly 200 attendees for an entire morning of leadership sessions, career coaching and networking at the SMU Collins Executive Education Center.

During the first “breakout session”, I had the opportunity to moderate an Executive Recruiter Panel featuring Olga Hallax (Egon Zehnder), Mike McCurdy (McCurdy Associates), Rex Kurzius (Timberhorn) and Tracy Elving (Heidrick and Struggles).  It was a great opportunity for attendees to “draw back the curtain” on Executive Recruiting and understand more about developing good relationships with recruiters and being better positioned for future opportunities.  All of the panelists did a fantastic job!

Afterwards, Mike D. Merrill – the Chief Bacon Maker himself – shared insights on all things social media related.  His session covered the importance of having and managing your social presence from a “content marketing” perspective.  The session was really great, if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, I highly recommend it.

Finally, J. Eric Smith – Chief Executive Officer Swiss Re Americas – spoke about his experiences and path to the top of one of the worlds’ largest insurance companies.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he attributed a great deal of his success to networking, but what I found insightful was his advice to be open to the “brutal” assignments that others might not want to take as a way to distinguish yourself during your career!

Although it was a long morning (5am wakeup on a Saturday – yikes!) it was another great Career Symposium by the Kellogg-DFW Alumni Club!