Ericka Dunlap, workshops and more

Ericka Dunlap, Miss America 2004, spoke this morning. She spoke about having the right attitude and leadership building. My favorite part of her session was actually the Q & A bit– someone asked her to sing a country song (she’s in Nashville trying to start one).  She has a really nice voice. She mentioned that music producers telling her to just stick with rapping instead of country, because she’s black.

She also left us this bag of M & M’s. It was part of her analogy about being a truffle in a bag of M and Ms. I don’t see any truffles in there, but I’m happy to chug the M and M’s.

The bag was full when we got it. I was not alone in eating them.

After Ericka’s speech, we’ve had about two hours of workshops on everything from writing a personal statement to how to take the GRE. And there’s more workshops to come in the afternoon after 3.

Before that, though, we have Lee Bienstock and Astronaut Chris Armstrong– between 1:30 and 3pm. Lee was on the 5th season of the Apprentice, where he spent several weeks staring down Donald Trump in the boardroom and trying his hardest not to laugh at The Donald’s hair. (At least I assume that’s what he did– I know I’d fall over laughing if I had to stare at DT’s hair all night).

I wrote the intros for most of the keynote speakers we had at the Convention. It’s fun and a bit strange to hear the National Leadership Council folks read those intros. Maybe that’ll be my next career– convention speechwriter. No, don’t feel sorry for me.. I’m only half-joking about the speech-writing bit.

Pre-Convention: The other Scholar Ambassadors

Remember Adam of the hilarious-mugging-for-pictures fame? He was the only Scholar Ambassador that I managed to photograph then. I’ve since gotten a picture of the other two SAs, namely Lauren and Stephanie.

Pre-Convention: The Jade series

Apologies for not posting more over the past few days. I’ve been busy with Convention outreach work AND I’ve had some problems with resizing some of the pictures. But I’ve since resized them, and I can put together the posts I was meaning to do over the past few days. First up– Jade Duncan.

Jade is an intern. Like Umar, she answers the phones and deals with current members, prospective members, etc. She was aghast that I had not posted pictures of her in the previous entry. So I’m making it up to her by posting what I call the Jade series.

Picture 1: Jade in a cheery mood.

 

Picture 2: Jade and Umar.

Picture 3: OK, now my presence is just tedious, because she has work to do. But I persist. (Can you tell that she’s ignoring me now?!)

More pictures to come later.

Introducing… the NSCS National Staff

As promised, here are some pictures around the office. A lot of people were not at their desks, so here are the pictures of people I managed to find (or hunt down). Everyone was completely unprepared, and mostly everyone begged to NOT be photographed, with one exception (we’ll get to her later in the post).

Umar, is an intern here. He answers the phones among other things, and deals with questions from members, prospective members and parents. The callers’ moods can be anywhere from excited to infuriated. So the frontdesk is something of a rollercoaster ride. Here he is talking to Bailey Kasten, our Operations Manager. Bailey is managing the Community Service project that I mentioned in the previous post. She’s also working on the Summit that precedes the Convention.

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This is Amy. Amy is the Senior Director of Operations. She’s overseen the entire planning for the Convention. Here she is, in the middle of her office, looking slightly sheepish. She didn’t expect to be photographed today.

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This is Adam. Adam’s a Scholar Ambassador. Note that he is one of only two people not cringing in the photograph. (I’m not sure what look he was going for here). Most of his work deals with the Summit. He and the other two Scholar Ambassadors are putting together presentations for the Summit. When I saw him, he was putting together the STAR chapter rewards system.

Above, another picture of Adam, not posing. I find this picture hilarious, because it caught him off guard.

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This is Shanna. She’s the Director of Member Experience-Chapters. This is the second picture I took of her. I don’t remember whether I took two because she hated the first one, or because I wanted to torment her some more. Either way, a good result. Shanna is working on the Summit with Bailey.

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Above is a picture of Andrea Cuba, Director of Outreach.What is that you’re saying? You can’t see her? Well that would be because she forbade me from using her image. And seeing as how she’s my immediate superviser, I feel compelled to stay in her good books. I may attempt some guerilla photography later, but only time will tell. Be on guard, Andrea.

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This is Lisa. Lisa is an intern here. She’s in charge of all the Convention work . She also refused to be photographed. So I chased her around the office and got this shot.

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This is Atiya. She also worked on the Convention. Wednesday was her last day here.

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And last but not least…

This is Sara. Sara is our graphics designer. If you’re wearing a T-shirt at the Convention, opening a Convention brochure or skimming the flash presentation on our website, you should know that Sara designed all that. Sara is also the only person who was willing to be photographed. In fact, when we found out that her picture didn’t get uploaded at all, she IMed me. “Where’s my picture?!” were her exact words, if I recall correctly. So I went back and took another photograph of her.

More pictures to come tomorrow. Assuming people don’t try and hide. (Hi coworkers! Please get up from under your desk! I won’t post unflattering pictures, I promise! Besides, you can’t hide there forever– you have to eat.)