On Wednesday David Jones Sr. sat down and shared his experience with the Scholars. Jones, an alumni of U of L, and more notably the co-founder of Humana has been a very generous donor to the Center and we were very happy to have him. He is the guest of our Local Leaders ELO which is designed to meet successful members of the community and learn from what they have to offer.
One would think that the director of an insurance company might be cold or uninteresting but Jones was very clearly the opposite. Jones often mentioned how important his family and friends were to him, and it was very clear how strongly he meant it. After telling us the story of Humana's origin he explained us what it meant to be an effective leader. He believes that optimism, clarity in communication, and integrity are the key to success. With "honest feedback" and "thoughtful action" leaders can create conditions for people to do the best work.
There was one line that really jumped out at me: to really be successful, one has to "abandon yesterday's success." This serves at motivation to be and my fellow scholars to not be content with what we may have done in the past, but rather to work towards a better future.