Transcript
Narrator 0:00
In an interview with the Washington Post in 2000 former Indianapolis mayor, William Hudnut was asked about the relevancy of education in determining a political leader’s potential for success. He responded, there’s more to school than book learning. Your education is what you remember after you have forgotten what you were taught in a panelist discussion at the Richard M. Fairbanks symposium held in downtown Indianapolis on April 1, 2015, civic leaders highlighted this expansive definition of education while relating how their experiences as students and young professionals helped direct them toward positions of leadership in their communities. Though each reflected on a different aspect of their personal development, they agreed that the best preparation for leadership roles comes through optimizing education, volunteer and work opportunities. In speaking about his liberal arts education, Mayor Greg Ballard explains how diligent study and a natural curiosity have helped expand his thinking.
Greg Ballard 1:03
Understanding history and its impact on people has always been curious to be in how people react and how people, frankly—and I still it’s very difficult to me to to overestimate the importance—how many people make decisions at critical times. And I read a lot of biographies, and I still read a lot of leadership books. Those, and if you…I think all of us have been very fortunate to have people who we looked at and said, I kind of like that style. I kind of like that. I like the way he did that. I like the way he did that. I like the way she’s moving around here. I like, I like all this stuff. How does she think like that? I mean, we’ve all been blessed to be around those sorts of people, right? So, so I think it’s a mix of it all.
Narrator 1:56
Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company, and a key organizer of the 1987 Pan Am Games and the 2012 Super Bowl credits his involvement in political campaigning during his college years as the most influential experience in his development as a leader.
Mark Miles 2:11
And the thing that helped me most, if I had any help in sort of leadership development, was that even while I was in college, I stayed out of here and got involved in the political campaign. And I’m not trying to run an ad for getting involved in politics necessarily, but it was a chance to see highly energized people, for the most part, very talented people, and if you stayed in it a little while, to have leadership responsibilities way beyond what was appropriate [audience laughter]. So frankly, for me, personally, more than my education at Wabash and liberal arts, which I cherish after the fact, [audience laughs] looking back, it was that that was sort of formative for me to see all these talented people. And again, you know, R, D or whatever, there’s just so few things, sports events in this community have been like that, that are just totally energizing. You learn to work your tail off. You learn to work with people, to bring people together, maybe to persuade a little bit. So it was, it was helpful to me.
Narrator 3:26
President of Indiana Sports Corp, Ryan Vaughn says that his shift towards civic involvement came about as a result of his experiences during his early years of professional practice following his graduation.
Ryan Vaughn 3:37
I probably didn’t appreciate, like Mark—maybe it’s a coincidence we both went to Wabash—the value of my education while I was getting it certainly. I mean, candidly, I went to school because I wanted to become the world’s greatest civil litigator. I wanted to walk into courtrooms and pound on tables and get into negotiations and you know, fly my private jets and drive my Mercedes. And I went to law school, because you had to go to law school and be a lawyer [audience laughter], and I started in the prosecutor’s office. I interned there, and I interned there and fell in love with the work. I mean, and it was very reaffirming to me. It’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a litigator. And I was litigated in the criminal, criminal justice world. When I graduated and passed the bar, I practiced as a prosecutor for almost four and a half years. And I got to the point of my career where I had done the same, literally, the same robbery of the same village pantry three times. [audience laughter] And I thought it’s, you know, I’m getting point of diminishing return here. I probably need to go into private practice, and now’s the time to transition and start to fulfill that goal. And I went into private practice, and six months into it, I just wanted to eat a bullet. So. I mean…
Ted Frantz 5:01
Go to Village Pantry. [audience laughter]
Ryan Vaughn 5:06
I mean, I went from hair on fire handling 95 major felony cases, putting murderers in prison, to working on one construction litigation case for 10 hours a day for six months. And the substance of the work was difficult, but after I had an honest conversation with myself, after chasing this dream for so long, what I what I realized was what I hadn’t realized when I was a prosecutor. And that is the great emotional reward that comes from improving your community. I missed showing up, putting on the white hat and saying, Ryan Vaughn, I’m here the assistance of Indianapolis to put that scumbag in jail. And that was the moment for me where I knew that I wasn’t going to be a rich civil litigator, that I had to have some sort of community-oriented mission. My education was helpful, but it was my personal experiences that drew drove me back to giving back to the community, because it just, it’s selfish, frankly, it just makes me happy. And that’s those are the opportunities I’ve chased, working for the mayor, serving on the council, and with this opportunity sports work. It’s really about, candidly, just fulfilling my own need to be happy in the service of others, and that’s what’s most important to me.
Ted Frantz 6:31
This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.