Revolutionary Skills from NHLC

Greetings to all! My name is Aytan Singh and I am a Grade 11 student at St. Augustine Catholic High School. Today, I had the pleasure to attend the Illuminate National High School Leadership Conference with over 170 students globally. Here is my blog which strives to highlight what I learned about finance, collaboration and executive thinking.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter F. Drucker, author and educator. In the morning we had a morning keynote which was very informative and interesting. We were being informed about The University of Brock and to find out if it was the right fit for us. I found that Brock University is a great university to go if you want to pursue business and if how its a great place to be a big fish in a small pond. The speaker was a representative from the university who did well in showing us why it is a great choice.

The first workshop that I had attended was by Chirag, a CPA who did a great job in explaining to us about financial investments. I learned that there are different assets in investing money long term and some have higher risks and higher rewards like stocks for example. Something that has no risk is keeping pocket cash as there is nothing that can happen to it and value will stay the same unlike stocks where value can skyrocketed up or plummet. In all, I learned a lot about financial literacy and how long term investments are a great way to make extra income.

The second workshop I had done was by Paul, who was a consultant for a company called Baine and Company which is a global management consultancy. Here, we learned about what he does at work and some of the tasks he does on a daily basis. Here I had learned leadership skills and how to calculate the total amount of a certain product using specific equations for marketing. Things change in life and you need to adapt to different patterns and trends.

The Deloitte keynote that we had done after the workshops was about Carmen Wade. She had talked about leadership and the career she's in. There were 6 lessons that she told us that were very important. These were: it takes time, never underestimate the value of trust, its fine to ask for help, never base your choices off assumptions, you need to assert and help yourself and you cannot just believe that you are unbiased. These lessons are very encouraging.

I consider myself an entrepreneur because I feel like I have many great ideas and I am a great thinker. If I had 5 dollars to start a business, I would make a tutoring company for younger children because all that I require to have is knowledge, which is free. To apply an entrepreneurial mindset, I need to always think positive and be willing to learn new things, allowing new ideas to flow.

Something I am very passionate about and looking forward to next year after attending NHLC is to learn more business ideas and concepts from other speakers and winning other workshops. I learned that leadership needs to be unbiased in order to thrive.