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Home > Matthew Pryor

Matthew Pryor

When I was a freshman, I had a difficult time transitioning from my small home town of New Ulm, MN to the 26,000 Undergraduate population of the University of Minnesota. In order to size down the University I joined a fraternity on campus, but realizing something was missing in my leadership development, I enrolled in the leadership minor. Whilst in the minor I learned how to be a value based leader, I learned the differences between positional and personal leadership, and I learned how to drive positive change with societal problems we see in our communities. From the minor, I have learned several valuable leadership life lessons, but the lesson that is reoccurring in my leadership journey has been to never be afraid to take a chance. It is not the good experiences as a leader that you learn from the most, but the difficult experiences and failures as a leader that pushes your leadership development to the next level.

Currently I have been hired as the new leadership marketing and PR associate for the leadership minor. My role is to ensure that we continue to build and develop coffee talks, update the new leadership website monthly, inspire the vision of the leadership minor to the newly established leadership minor leader corps, and to recruit the best of the best from the U of M to the leadership minor program.

The leadership minor has been a great opportunity for me to develop my leadership abilities. In the future, this experience will go nicely with my goals of aspiring to be a director of HR for a major fortunate 500 company where inspiring vision to change the status quo and motivating employees to move towards that vision is essential when building the human expertise of an organization to its maximum potential.

My advice for students in the leadership minor or interested in joining the leadership minor is to come into the minor with an open mind, and understand that the minor is designed to challenge your leadership capabilities. Through hard work, determination, and reflection every student in this minor can learn key skills that will push their leadership development to the next level.