President
Chapter: Xi
Semester and Year Initiated: Fall 2011 Bio: Originally from San Antonio, TX, I joined Xi chapter (Bellarmine University) in the fall of 2011. During my time as an active I served as an S chair three times (once as scholastic and twice as school spirit), candidate educator once, VP of finance, fraternity father twice, and chapter president. I attended the 2012 and 2014 conventions, the 2012 and 2014 conferences, the ADGEF retreat in 2012, and visited chapters outside of national events. I also created the budget for the 2015 convention. I graduated in the spring of 2015 with a bachelors in accounting and have worked in the field ever since. I currently work as the Lead Accountant for Victory Foods, PBC, a hemp food company based in KY. As an alumnus, I have attended every convention since graduating and the ADGEF retreat in 2015. I have served as the ombudsman for Xi chapter, helping guide them to being named most outstanding chapter at the 2016 convention, and the national chapter financial advisor. In 2018 I was elected to the National Council as Vice President of Finance and I was re-elected in 2020. In November of 2021 I was appointed to the position I currently hold, Executive Vice President. During my time on Council we have implemented common sense dues adjustments, assisted chapters with financial issues and creating fundraisers, achieved over 90% collection rate for two consecutive years, and have reached almost $9000 in profit for this fiscal year. We received all but one chapter report on time this semester, with the last one being submitted less than 12 hours after the deadline. We hosted an extremely successful conference with 5 of our (at the time) 8 chapters in attendance. Communication between the active members and Council is at a great place and expansion opportunities are starting to pop up as we transition back to the typical level of activity on campuses across the country. We have accomplished much and I am excited to see what the next two years can bring us. Platform: I learned that ADG is a great way to go in the fall of 2011, my freshman year of college. I joined Xi chapter at Bellarmine university and quickly learned how much this organization would be a benefit to my personal and professional development. The following summer I attended the National Convention in Louisville and became even more passionate about being a brother. Two months later we hosted the 57th National President, Matt Berkshire, and after speaking to him about nationals and watching how he interacted with everyone at the chapter I decided that I wanted to one day become National President myself. At long last, I intend to take the next step in that journey and run for National President at this year’s convention in Kansas City. Some key focus areas that I have for the Council if I am elected are growth, education, accountability, and professionalism. I will improve those areas by working with professionals with Greek life experience to bring us up to speed on industry best practices for membership development, alumni relations, expansion, and recruitment. I have already started building relationships with Executive Directors and National Presidents of other Greek organizations to move us in that direction. By utilizing the knowledge we gain from other professionals we can develop a model to help holistically improve ADG. A rough outline of that model would be: Regular outreach to the active chapters and their ombudsmen will be a main priority to help understand how we can better assist our active members and to better communicate our expectations of them as members. Providing worthwhile and fun events from nationals and opportunities for personal and professional growth for each member, like sending members to leadership conferences outside of ADG, are just a few ways I hope to support the actives. This consistent communication and opportunity for growth will open the door for involved alumni that are excited to continue their membership post-graduation and will help ADG grow. Those involved alumni will be able to help expansion efforts by providing more hands to work with when it comes to the recruitment and education of colonies and will allow these experienced alumni to guide new members through their ADG journey. If this model is successful, we will be able to use it during chapter recruitment as an example that involvement and fulfillment within ADG continues beyond your college years and provides the opportunity for lifelong brotherhood. Achieving these goals will require considerable work from the Council and I will hold every member of it to a high standard. Poor communication or lack of follow through will not be tolerated as we do not have the luxury of time to complete these goals and any other goals that the other members of Council or other brothers in general have. Along with these expectations, establishing camaraderie within the Council is another way we can maintain this level of performance. I intend for us to lead from the top down and show that having fun is just as important as doing the work. I believe that all our goals are attainable with the right team and making sure we have a group that is committed to both ADG and each other is of the utmost importance. I believe I am the right man to lead that team and I would be honored to lead us into a new century of ADG. |
Chapter: Rho
Semester and Year initiated: Fall 2008 Bio: PROVEN LEADERSHIP, STRONG WORK ETHIC, AND DEDICATED SERVICE TO ALPHA DELTA GAMMA & THE GREATER COMMUNITY Aaron has a proven track record of service to others. In middle school, Aaron spent several hours after school each day, for a whole month, going door-to-door collecting can goods for charity. This was only the beginning... Throughout the years, Aaron has been involved in numerous charitable events and organizations. Some of his best memories involve going on a Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge Spring Break 3 times during his undergraduate career down to the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, serving on the Board for a local non-profit called Housing Opportunities of Northern Kentucky, and serving the brotherhood of Alpha Delta Gamma. ADG is so engrained in Aaron's personal life that his wife, April (Past National Sweetheart), is considered by many to be a sister to ADGs. On a scholastic-level, Aaron has two undergraduate degrees (Accounting & Business) and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Thomas More University. In addition, he has his Master's of Business Administration from Xavier University and a Master's in Accountancy from Northern Kentucky University. He has also obtained certifications as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and as a Scrum Master. On professional-level, Aaron has vast experience in the financial industry, retail banking, automotive services, accounting, auditing, leadership, training & development. Aaron is currently a full-time Senior Internal Auditor, part-time Adjunct Professor, runs a small Mobile Disc Jockey business, does some consulting work, is the current Ombudsman of Rho Chapter, and is a dedicated board member of the Tri-State Alumni organization. Platform: NATIONAL COUNCIL An organization is only as strong as its leaders, and in Alpha Delta Gamma there is no shortage of talent and passion. Each member of council will be coming on the board with a job to do, and will have a vision of how they want to make their mark on the history of our great organization. As President, I will empower the rest of the National Council to create their own attainable goals, which will accompany their bylaw/constitutionally mandated duties. I will work closely with the Executive Vice President to assist those council members in accomplishing those goals. In addition, I have my own set of goals for our national organization, some of which are detailed below. CHAPTER SUPPORT The sole purpose of the National Council is to support its members. As we continue to heal from the pandemic, we are going to have a challenging couple of semesters in front of us. The National Council should be right be by our active member's side to help them thrive through this next year. We will be utilizing Zoom video conference calls to check in with each chapter regularly, and will have regularly scheduled opportunities for communication. In addition, we need to continue to work to get active members to attend national fraternity conventions; such as, AFLV and the ADG National Convention. These conventions can be eye-opening experiences, and serve as a great opportunity to share best practices and to spark new ideas. COMMUNICATION I ran on this issue and transparency when I became Vice President of Finance and Executive Vice President, and I have fulfilled those campaign promises... but I plan to double-down on that success! The pandemic has reshaped the way we view our world. When traditional interactions with our friends, family, and brothers were no longer possible, I teamed up with Matt Caraway (Alpha Eta Alumni & current National Vice President of Finance) to provide a weekly opportunity for fraternity brothers to get together to socialize while never leaving their homes. The ADG After Hours events were a fun and engaging way to get us through the spring 2020 semester and keep our members communicating, I would like to bring these back in the Fall in the form of monthly social Zoom calls. Going into this Fall semester, we are hopefully going to be able to recruit new members and engage our chapter members in a more traditional way... but we still need to get creative to get our chapters to thrive! Chapter leadership should be checking in with, asking questions to, and sharing knowledge with our national council regularly so we can tackle any issues as quickly and effectively as possible. Alpha Delta Gamma National Fraternity also needs to continue to foster the great relationship with The Foundation, and work in tandem on some major projects. It is time to bring back Five Minute Fridays so that we can better get to know our members from all over the world. In addition, National Council needs to utilize the knowledge of both our Past National Presidents and our Active Members. I plan to help in that quest by establishing a Presidential Advisory Cabinet to help me navigate this organization through the lens of past and current fraternal leaders. Below is a list of who have already committed to being on the cabinet, but others may be added (if you have interest, please let me know):
Lastly, we need to push for enhanced inter-chapter communication. We need to encourage chapter members to visit other chapters, plan joint events, and maybe even bring active members with council when they do their formal chapter visits. Travelling with other brothers often yields stronger friendships/bonds and can yield great ideas. CONFERENCE I firmly believe that we need to beef up our Conferences, and I want to do this in a way that benefits everyone involved in more ways than one. My vision for future conferences is to sometimes host them during Spring break in exotic locations. The conferences would involve doing a week-long Habitat for Humanity build, with Conference on the overlapping weekend, and to have it in a location that is both a great Spring break spot AND provides us an opportunity to potentially grow a new colony on a nearby campus. Some of these ideas are already being worked on, and I am partnering with our Philanthropy Director, Deidric Tupper, and some other alumni to get it done! In addition, I plan to work with the local schools to get professors and/or administration of the college to provide us some high-quality programming that will be streamed live, and archived for later viewing. TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT Here I would like to take a two-pronged approach. On one prong, as I mentioned in the above paragraph, I would like to augment our current national events in regards to in-person/virtual training's. Some of this is already being done, and I want to build upon the success of our recent ADG Leadership Conferences. On the other prong, I want to establish a system where alumni (including National Council) can serve as a resource to our active members by providing free and timely reviews of school papers and resumes. This is yet another opportunity to partner with ADGF! In addition, we need to build a library of video tools that our chapters can utilize to better manage their local organization. Before leaving my role as National Vice President of Finance I provided video training's on how to do certain aspects of the role. I want to do something similar for each leadership role on both the national council and the chapter executive boards. For example, I would like to see the National Vice President of Finance do a video walking the Chapter Treasurer through how to add new members and invoice. Another example would be to have the National Executive Vice President record how a proper video chapter meeting should run and how to properly create effective and efficient agendas. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Last, but not least, we need to better utilize our Board of Directors. This may include reorganizing our Director roles, removing some positions, or adding others. Being a full volunteer national body, it is essential that we provide opportunities for active and alumni members of our fraternity to be engaged with the national fraternity and utilize their skills for the betterment of the organization. This includes training and further-leveraging our on-ground chapter support--Chapter Ombudsman! |