The President Clocks Overtime on President's Day

On Monday February 19, the students in Professor Pullano’s SEE 4060 class, and Professor Panciera’s SEE3160 class, were privy to a special lecture from none other than the President of the Providence campus, Marie Bernardo-Sousa. As a student in Professor Pullano’s class, I was lucky enough to attend this lecture and saw firsthand the importance of connections within the workplace such as a professor and the campus President. This lecture was intended to illustrate topics like organizational strategy, leadership, and ethics.  

Fearlessly the President stood in front of our two classes in the SEEM Lab, unaccompanied by any PowerPoint or class lecture plan. She broke it down for us, teaching us about her journey into a leadership position. As a Johnson & Wales University Alumna, Bernardo-Sousa began as a student employee; she most attributes time in the admissions office to the furthering of her path at JWU. Career risks were important for Bernardo-Sousa who feels her zig zag through the university’s different departments helped her become more innovative. All of this came from her “let go” attitude, “if you tap me on the shoulder and ask, can you do this?” she is sure to fire that response back at you.  

The President touched on topics relevant to my course, including the idea of a mission statement as a blueprint for what an organization and its employees believe in. She attributes her time at JWU to having a strong alignment with the values of the school. Bernardo-Sousa believes in education and innovation, and how JWU continually moves forward and evolves. 

 As if by demonstration, the President changed the format of her lecture and posed questions to the audience of students in front of her. I was impressed by the open conversation that the President created with her awareness of our thoughts and feelings about issues. Simple topics, about what we liked and disliked about Johnson & Wales allowed us to conduct a respectful dialogue with someone we would otherwise not have the chance to hear from. Highlights such as no Friday classes, our study abroad programs, and our DEE programs were things that stood out to us as students here. One of the bigger issues mentioned was information sharing. With so many great things happening around JWU, the student population feels as if there is not enough distribution of these things. This type of event certainly made us feel more in the loop. 

My main takeaway from this special lecture was that culture is everything, it can keep you somewhere just as easily as it can influence you to leave a situation. All of us should have personal mission statements that evolve and help us brand ourselves. When these personal morals align with the values of an organization, we can see careers like Bernardo Sousa’s evolve and persist over time. Because of this connection, the president has been able to do incredible things like moving JWU forward into the future in every way.  

Side Bar Hot Topics with The President: 

After the lecture, I asked her two questions: 

First, I asked her how many classes like this she would attend per year? 

“Four Classes”, was her reply, making me feel extremely lucky at that moment for the opportunity of hearing her lecture. 

Next, I asked if she could describe her time today in 3 words what would those be? 

She used the words: caring, honest, and strong and related all three to the students whom she was talking to and how we made impressions on her.