Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a cultural group who hides their partying behind community service hours and charitable donations. However, I wish to challenge that stereotype by focusing on the professional development and self-improvement opportunity that is presented to Greek life members - especially those who hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and work with other officers to keep up a well-balanced, structured, and involved organization.

Fraternities and sororities must operate as a company first, and a socialite second in order to be successful. I would like to point out some key concepts that show the relation between Greek organizations and businesses.

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to work with specific areas of the chapter
• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues
• Must market themselves well to be able to continue steadily to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to put up their members to and gear their brand
• Must follow rules from, and report to, their national headquarters
• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, along with many policies and procedures in place for holding events

These are just a few points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the ultimate business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for private development.

As president, I see all sides of managing a Greek organization and must help every officer no matter what team her position is a part of. My days are filled up with constantly making decisions and weighing the consequences. I have discovered to create fair decisions that benefit the higher good, while remaining unbiased in the process. I also answer to everyone's questions and concerns while problem solving when an unplanned event takes place. For instance, we had a small crisis with flyers that have been made to market an event we were having. If they came in, we noticed the contact email on the flyers was spelled wrong. After some deliberation, we made a decision to utilize the flyers we'd and made a brand new email with the typo included.

A huge section of managing a successful organization is beneficial and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I discovered how exactly to properly send and react to emails in a professional manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being fully a leader of my chapter. I have learned to communicate concisely and format information in the very best way. I have discovered providing information in bullet lists is the best way to get members to read messages fully. All of our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the different areas on their team. Officers are in charge of organizing their own meetings and taking minutes to record what was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and working together with others.

One of the very most valuable traits that I am still learning through my presidency, is getting confident with hard conversations. I work closely with your Director of Standards and Ethics to be sure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. If someone is falling behind, it's our job to possess conversations together about why this really is happening and what we can do to be sure it doesn't happen again. These tough conversations become even tougher when remembering that the members of our chapter will also be our friends and sisters. As a leader of a Greek organization, I'm learning how to have these hard conversations while remaining in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has so much more to provide than the social aspect of the organization, and can truly prepare young adults to join the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations could offer life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.