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

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

Greek organizations:
• Divide officers into teams to work on specific aspects of the chapter
• Must operate on a strict budget, fueled solely from member's dues
• Must market themselves well in order to continue steadily to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to put on 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

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

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

A huge section of running a successful organization works well and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have discovered how to properly send and respond to emails in an expert manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being a leader of my chapter. I discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the top way. I are finding providing information in bullet lists is the best way to have members to see messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of progress in the different areas on their team. Officers are responsible for organizing their particular meetings and taking minutes to record the thing that was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and dealing with others.

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