December 16, 2024
First College of Business Finance Conference deemed a success
The spring’s successful TechSummit spurred an idea. The student-led event brought together 18 business and technology experts on ECU’s campus who addressed technology trends, business strategies, leadership development, and what jobs look like today and tomorrow.
About 250 students from the College of Engineering and Technology and the College of Business attended the summit.
One of the event’s organizers was Cole Miller, a COB double major (finance and accounting) and a fall ’24 graduate. Upon meeting with COB finance majors Pierce Elwell and Gregory Sharafanski, the three borrowed from the TechSummit model and created the inaugural Finance Conference, or FinCon, held in November, an all-day event featuring mostly COB alumni and headlined by keynote speaker Kelly King, former CEO of BB&T. An opening fireside chat featuring IMB Power CFO Michael Howard kicked off the event. A fireside chat with Wells Fargo executive director Michael Crooke closed the events.
“I like to participate in events like FinCon because it gives me an opportunity to share a message with students directly and hopefully share something that will help them professionally and personally,” said King. “My purpose in life is to make a positive, Godly impact on the lives of as many people as I can.”
And what was King’s message?
“There is a way to find the intersection between success and happiness, but it’s very difficult because most people are molded into thinking success is defined by how much “stuff” you accumulate in life,” said King. “Money may define success on one level, but it rarely contributes to a sense of happiness … a sense of accomplishment, achievement, a sense of my life matters, I make a difference. Happiness is mostly about accomplishing a worthwhile purpose which creates energy, drive, motivation, focus and responsibility.”
Finding your North Star
When Howard opened FinCon and chatted with Elwell, he was the CFO for IBM® Power®, a family of servers based on IBM processors that allow organizations to respond faster to business demands. He’s an Arthur School MBA ’99 who spent most of his professional career in IBM.
“Once I got inside of IBM, it was very clear what I wanted to accomplish,” said Howard.
That clarity was Howard’s ‘North Star.’
According to Howard, a North Star drives, pushes and pulls you to become something better than you would be without it; it’s something you’re passionate about. As a teenager, Howard had a positive mentorship with a local pastor.
“I was really attracted to the energy that he had; I started to see how he influenced and how he developed and how he coached and how he mentored.”
It was this relationship that helped develop Howard’s North Star. He knew he wanted to lead, guide, navigate and influence, and he found his North Star at IBM as a future CFO.
“I looked at other CFOs … in IBM, and I looked at their careers … observe some of the key roles and jobs they had along their journey,” said Howard. “Coupled with really good people that mentored and that coached me … (I was) able to put things together.”
Miller will tell you those kinds of stories from King and Coleman that he, Elwell and Sharafinski had hoped would be told to the 350 COB students who attended.
“We brought in high-caliber speakers, thanks to our (COB) networks,” said Miller. “Some speakers have not been on campus for a long time. Their thoughts on how the campus has changed and their willingness to eagerly come back and speak to ECU encompasses the “pirates support pirates” mantra perfectly.”
Organizers believe the first FinCon was a success based on feedback and participation. Meetings have already been held to plan for next year’s event.
“There is a lot of interest in students to work on the 2025 Finance Conference, and we want to ensure we take the right steps to have the next one be even better than this one,” said Miller. “Additionally, there are students who left this conference inspired and want to create one for other departments.”
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