On Wednesday, November 28, Youngstown State University held a Youth Leadership Summit in which many Poland students attended. The Leadership Summit also included students from 17 other schools as well.

The Summit was presented by Team IBB and All Choices Matter, which includes local and national speakers who travel to schools to inspire the youth to be positive change agents, to be passionate, and to take charge of their future.

The students learned the qualities it takes to be a leader, mainly recognized as discipline, integrity, creativity, passion, and perseverance. The eight speakers there taught the students about entrepreneurship, innovation, and how anyone can bring positive change into their community.

The speakers spoke about personal experiences and life conflicts, and how they fought through them and made connections to the students on how to fight their life problems. The speakers were quite well-known names such as; Jim Tressel (President of Youngstown State), Carla Baldwin (First Woman African-American judge in Youngstown), Carmella Williams (Director of Inclusion at Youngstown Business Incubator), Derrick McDowell (Founder of the Youngstown Flea), Steve Pelton (President of Choices), Tonia Farmer MD (Otolaryngologist at Lippy Group), and James Schleider (Life Coach with Team IBB).

Teacher and Student Council Advisor, Mrs. Lunivech joined the students on the Leadership Summit on Wednesday as well.

Mrs Lunivech said, “I think it was a very good experience for a lot of our students; they had good speakers. There was a judge that was very beneficial to listen to, and obviously, Jim Tressel is always good to hear as well.”

Mrs Lunivech enjoyed the summit overall and said she would go again especially to hear new speakers talk.

Assistant Principal, Mr. Daley also joined the students at the Leadership Summit. He had some very positive feedback about the the event.

“I was very pleased with the student response, and to me, that’s the most important thing.I thought they did a nice job of giving each speaker a direction. They gave each speaker a theme that they would focus on, so I thought they did a nice job organizing it and giving each speaker a purpose.”

Overall, in the eyes of the students and staff that attended the summit, it was a success.