Start your professional development journey

Rick Bennet is an alumnus of our Central Missouri Chapter and is Chief Executive Officer of CCA Global Partners. A veteran of the retail industry for over 40 years, Rick has overseen the company, which is a cooperative of thousands of independent retailers, since 2008. Over his career, he was CEO of retailers Famous Barr in St. Louis, and Kaufmann’s in Pittsburgh, and vice-chair of May Department Store, which operated 450 stores with $14 billion in revenue. Brother Bennet was Grand President of SigEp from 2015-2017, overseeing the full adoption of the Balanced Man Program and strengthening our partnerships with higher education. 

With an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, Brother Bennet has also served as an adjunct professor at the university, where he developed a social entrepreneurship curriculum. He’s vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Glacier National Park Conservancy and serves on the board of several retailers, including Ace Hardware, Charming Shoppes and Drugstore.com.  A regional director for the Fraternity after graduation, he received the SigEp Citation for his professional success in 2001. We are honored to have Brother Bennet on the show with us to share his perspective and wealth of experience.

Steve Hofstetter is a graduate of our New York Phi Chapter at Columbia University, and a comedian and author with a national profile. He has 600,000 YouTube subscribers, 500,000 Facebook followers and over 650 million views across the platforms. His mant TV appearances include ESPN’s Quite Frankly, CBS’s Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, Fox & Friends, Showtime’s White Boyz in the Hood, VH1’s Countdown and ABC’s Barbara Walters Special. He hosted Fox’s Laughs and Comcast’s Trial By Laughter. 

Steve was Senior Comedy Correspondent for Fox Sports and hosted radio show “The Sports Minute or So” on 170 radio stations as well as “Four Quotas” on Sirius Satellite Radio. The original writer for collegehumor.com, he’s written humor columns for the New York Times, Sportsillustrated.com, NHL.com and got his start by co-founding the website “Sports Jerk of the Week.” His fifth comedy album Pick Your Battles reached #1 on iTunes’ comedy charts. 

Brother Hofstetter is a longtime member of SigEp’s Board of Governors, former student director on the National Board and currently serves on our National Advancement Council. Steve has had quite the career and has found the time to contribute so much to the Fraternity, and we’re excited to have him on the SigEp Podcast.

Find more from Steve at www.stevehofstetter.com

Twitter: @SteveHofstetter

Instagram: @stevehofstetter

Facebook

Check out Steve's app: appsteve.com

Jared Fenton, Pennsylvania ’17, is the founder and executive director of The Reflect Organization. During his time in our Pennsylvania Delta chapter at the University of Pennsylvania, Jared founded Reflect which today is a nationally recognized nonprofit, with chapters at multiple colleges and universities, dedicated to empowering students to foster a culture of authenticity, self-love, and allyship on campus. Jared discusses how and why Reflect came to be, the importance of being our true authentic selves, the importance of "physical" vs "social" distancing and the concept of one caring person. 

Learn more about The Reflect Organization at reflecteffect.org.

Find resources from reflect at linktr.ee/reflectresourceguide.

To contact Jared and Reflect for support, email info@reflecteffect.org with the subject line "You're My One Caring Person"

Interested in supporting The Reflect Organizations Three Dollar Challenge? Support College Student Mental Wellness.

Hosts Shawn and Ben talk with Grand Secretary, brother Billy Maddalon, North Carolina State ’90. Billy tells Ben and Shawn how he went from an undergraduate at North Carolina State with close to no interest in Fraternities to serving on SigEps national board of directors years later. He shares his own SigEp journey and the wisdom he's gained along the way. Which includes why we need diversity of people and thought in our lives and what can make or break a positive Fraternity culture. He’ll also share his vision for what SigEp can and needs to be for the future. Whether you're a brand new member of SigEp or a longtime brother or friend of the Fraternity, Brother Maddalon has some advice we could all benefit from. 

Learn more about the National Board of Directors.

John Durrant is a 1996 graduate of our Florida Beta Chapter at Stetson University. Currently executive vice president for retail and direct banking at CapitalOne, Brother Durrant has built a successful career in the banking industry. 

After serving as a regional director for SigEp in 1996, he went on to roles at First USA, Barclays and Bank of America, where he was senior vice president for small business banking. John earned an MBA at Duke Fuqua School of Business and went on to Morgan Stanley before joining CapitalOne in 2011. At CapitalOne, he was head of business banking before taking on his current role in 2013 overseeing the customer strategy, product and operations teams for the company’s consumer banking business. 

Brother Durrant is a board member of the Consumer Bankers Association as well as Junior Achievement of Washington. 

A long-time member of SigEp’s Board of Governors, he’s also served as a local volunteer and facilitator at SigEp leadership programs. He resides in Northern Virginia with his wife Shannon and three sons. We’re honored to have John on the podcast and learn from his Lessons in Leadership.

John Lawson is chairman of W.M. Jordan Company, where he served as CEO for more than 30 years. John has built WM Jordan into the largest construction company in Virginia and a major player in the industry. At any given time, W.M. Jordan is handling dozens of projects bringing in tens of millions, including office parks, hotels, academic buildings and museums around the mid-Atlantic. 

A 1975 graduate of Virginia Tech, he was a charter member of our Virginia Kappa Chapter and has remained active in leading the chapter. He led construction and fundraising for Virginia Kappa’s new $5 million chapter home and has heavily invested in the Virginia Tech community. Serving on the university’s board of visitors for 10 years, including two as rector, he chaired a campaign that raised over $1 billion for Virginia Tech. Brother Lawson is the namesake of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at VT as well as the football team’s Beamer-Lawson Indoor Practice Facility. He’s a leader in a number of civic organizations around the state of Virginia, the 2018 Virginia Business Person of the Year, and a 2015 recipient of the SigEp Citation, the Fraternity’s highest professional honor.

Wendell Rakosky, Baldwin Wallace ’78, retired from Lockheed Martin as the vice president of international human relations after over 30 years with the company. In this episode he shares his experience managing thousands of employees all over the world to help you understand how you can become a better employee and what tools you'll need to land your next job.

In this episode Wendell mentions the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

You can sign up to connect with your own SigEp career coach like Wendell a sigep.org/careercoaching

Professional development is a habit, according to Tyler Boggess, Drake ’10. Brother Boggess is an account executive at Apex Systems, a world class technology services business. 

In this episode, learn from Tyler how to build that habit by assembling your personal board of directors, developing the right exit strategy for your job or internship, writing thank you notes like a pro and cultivating your network like no one else does.

Books mentioned:

What Color is Your Parachute?

The 2-Hour Job Search

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Connect with Tyler on LinkedIn

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This episode is supported by mySigEp. A brand new door to your dear old Fraternity.

and the Official SigEp Store. Use code SIGEPPODCAST at officialsigepstore.com to get 10 percent off when you spend $20 or more.

Alan Wilson is a 1980 graduate of our Tennessee Alpha Chapter at the University of Tennessee, where he served as president. Brother Wilson was CEO, president and chairman of the board for McCormick and Company from 2008 to 2015. As McCormick CEO, Brother Wilson increased sales from $1 billion to $4.2 billion and more than doubled the company’s market capitalization. Brother Wilson began rising through the ranks at McCormick in 1993, following nine years at Proctor and Gamble and several years of service as a U.S. Army officer after graduating college. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the University of Tennessee system. Brother Alan Wilson is a 2015 recipient of the SigEp Citation. SigEp CEO Brian Warren asks Brother Wilson how his time in the military shaped his path, what core principles Alan has used throughout his successful career and how they can be used by anyone in any industry.

When you think of someone in sales, you might imagine someone going house to house, knocking on doors trying to convince people to buy products, or maybe a car salesman. People tend to think of an unflattering image. On today’s show, we learned that sales doesn’t have to be a dirty word. More specifically, how selling someone on joining SigEp can be beneficial to both you and them. Whether you’re a professional recruiter, you're trying to convince a friend why they should eat at the restaurant you like or asking someone to join SigEp, sales is something we all do everyday. To better understand how we can all get better at sales and better at asking people to join SigEp, we spoke with brother Sean Anthony. Sean is a graduate of Dartmouth College, who will be the first to tell you he wanted nothing to do with Fraternities as a freshman. Sean talks about how that changed and how he took what he learned recruiting and working professionally for SigEp after graduation, and turned it into a really successful career. After SigEp, he went on to work as a recruiter for the retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. And now, Sean is the advanced services recruiting leader for KForce, an award winning professional staffing agency.