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Princeton leaders attend Ivy League summit at Yale

Student leaders from some of America's most prestigious institutions of higher learning attended the first Ivy Leaders Summit last weekend at Yale University.

The summit — titled "Integrity and Responsibility in Leadership" and attended by 10 University students — is the first attempt in recent history to promote interaction between leaders across the Ivies, according to David Tukey '02, who helped organize the event. The summit featured panel discussions and keynote speakers.

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The seven-year-old Ivy Council, which sponsored the summit, is made up of students from each institution in the Ivy League who meet and discuss issues pertaining to their schools, according to a statement from the council.

"Our purpose was to bring in the top leaders across the Ivy League and bring interaction between people who wouldn't normally interact with each other," said Tukey, who is a vice president on the council. "We thought the interaction would be valuable for leaders and that the overarching gain would be a lot of energy to implement ideas from the summit."

Khori Whittaker '00, a delegate to the Ivy Council, said he hoped the summit would yield tangible results for the Princeton community, especially for underclassmen.

"A goal is to get the freshmen and sophomore [participants] more involved on campus," Whittaker said, adding that he hoped the summit would encourage underclassmen to seek more leadership positions.

A selection committee comprising student members of the Ivy Council picked 10 University students from an applicant pool of 36 based on the applicants' prior leadership experience, Tukey said.

Several summit participants from Princeton said the panels and discussions on business, law, science, politics and education were most valuable to students.

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"I feel lucky to have participated. It was a pretty tremendous group of students and speakers and the level of interaction was extremely high," Hilary Cantor '00 said.

Cantor said that some of the panels' lengthy and varied discussions gave her some important insights into leadership. "There is no one way to lead — and I learned that," she said.

"The people were amazing — there were a bunch of eloquent and knowledgeable speakers on the panels. The discussions were inspiring intellectually," said Courtney Weiner '01, who is also president of the College Democrats. "It was also really good to meet with people in other schools and find out how they run things."

While the panels featured speeches by prominent professionals — such as the Yale University president and the Dartmouth College provost — two keynote speakers also addressed the summit. Princeton trustee Harold Saunders '52 delivered an address titled "Being a Leader in a Citizen's Century" that Tukey said was well received.

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Matt Ouimet, president and CEO of Disney Cruise Lines, was the second keynote speaker. Weiner said Oiumet's speech related to the importance of developing one's own identity as a leader.