When most people hear the word “Fraternity”, Zac Efron and his frat brothers’ faces pop up. To your dismay, this post is not about Zac Efron and his crazy party stories.
Two years ago, I was one of the many skeptics. When my friend asked me to go “rush” for this co-ed business fraternity, I doubted the legitimacy of the business part. Nevertheless, I still went to the recruitment event. It was at that event that I met some of the most amazing people ever. In the past two years, I have been heavily involved in building this fraternity with a focus on improving and promoting the professional aspect of our colony within the SFU community. With our chapter installation in a few weeks, nine other members of our SFU colony and I attended the regional leadership development conference hosted by the organization in San Francisco.
The Principled Business Leadership Institutes are the annual leadership conferences hosted and facilitated by Alpha Kappa Psi headquarters for all the members of the organization in different regions. Before attending the conference, the number of 160,000+ living members and alumni was a very vague concept to me. It is only after attending the conference that I understood the incredible professional network that AKPsi offers. There were hundreds of delegates sent from different chapters from different prominent universities just in the Western region alone including Stanford University, Washington University, the University of California, and Berkeley to name a few.
Throughout the conference, we were given formal and informal opportunities to share and learn from each others’ experiences. Some of the initiatives that other university chapters shared were truly eye-opening. There were also many alumni present at the conference for mentoring and recruitment purposes. Specifically, there was a recruitment portion in the conference where the student delegates were given an opportunity to network with alumni or alumni connections from major corporations like Facebook and Oracle. From this two-day conference, I learned many practical leadership and management skills but more importantly, I was inspired by the amazing individuals I met and have realized how much potential there is for both myself and our AKPsi chapter at SFU.
Gini Kuo is a second year business student intending to concentrate in the fields of Marketing and MIS. She is currently the Director of Sponsorship on the Organizing Committee for the upcoming National Leadership Development Conference hosted by AIESEC SFU. She is also the founder and served as the VP of Membership of Alpha Kappa Psi, a Co-Ed Professional Business Fraternity at SFU. In the upcoming year, Gini will be serving on the SFSS Board of Directors as the Business Faculty Representative. She has a passion for engaging the community as well as a keen interest in developing herself professionally while making meaningful connections with people.