Many may only see collegiate Greek life as a social 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 that hold leadership positions. Currently, I serve my one-hundred member sorority as chapter president and assist other officers to keep 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 want to point out some key concepts that report 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 to recruit new members
• Have mission statements and values to keep their members to and gear their brand
• Must follow rules from, and are accountable to, their national headquarters
• Have insurance to cover their organization and its members, along with many policies and procedures in area for holding events

They're just a couple points that show how Greek organizations are ran as the ultimate business, combining friendship with professionalism and offering members a great opportunity for personal development.

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

A huge part of running a successful organization is beneficial and professional communication. Our main forum of communication between officers and the advisory board is emailing. I have learned how to properly send and respond to emails in a professional manner. My communication skills have improved substantially since being a leader of my chapter. I have discovered to communicate concisely and format information in the most truly effective way. I are finding providing information in bullet lists is the greatest way to have members to see messages fully. Our officers must hold team meetings and get reports of τελευταια νεα progress in different areas on the team. Officers are accountable for organizing their own meetings and taking minutes to record that which was discussed. Greek organizations teach members to effectively and professionally communicate through emailing, holding meetings, and working with others.

One of the very valuable traits that I am still learning through my presidency, is ways to get confident with hard conversations. I work closely with our Director of Standards and Ethics to make sure our members are holding themselves to the high ideals and values. When someone is falling behind, it is our job to own conversations using them about why this is happening and what we are able to do to make sure it does not 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 am learning how to have these hard conversations while residing in control of myself and the conversation.

Greek life has so much more to provide compared to the social part of the business, and can truly prepare teenagers to participate the professional world. Through developing members personally, and developing officers professionally, Greek organizations can provide life-changing collegiate experiences that can't be found elsewhere.