From student, to alumna, to Board of Trustees member, Megan Sall seems to be the posterchild for “Laker for a Lifetime,” making the choice for her to present at Friday’s Wheelhouse talk an obvious one.

Megan Sall is a two-time alumna of Grand Valley State University and serves on the GVSU Board of Trustees. She received her bachelor of arts degree in 2007 and continued on to receiver her master’s degree in public administration in 2009. She became a member of the GVSU Board of Trustees starting in 2015 and will serve on the board through 2022.

Sall is currently working full time at The Right Place in Grand Rapids as a business development manager. She is well-known and highly respected in the Grand Rapids business community and serves on the boards of multiple nonprofit organizations in the area.

Chadd Dowding is the program manager of the Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy.

“We’re very excited to have Megan Sall speaking at the next Wheelhouse talk through the Cook Leadership Academy,” Dowding said.

In her Wheelhouse Talk, Sall will focus on encouraging young leaders and students to make successful transitions from engaged students to thriving young leaders. She will speak from and make references to her own experiences and expertise as she went from being a student to serving on the Board of Trustees in a mere five years. She also became a prominent leader in the business community during this time. Sall will give advice that she hopes will aid young leaders after they graduate from GVSU.

“Sall is a Cook Leadership Academy alumna on top of being a two time alumni of GVSU,” Dowding said. “Given her experiences at Grand Valley and the outer world, we believe her to be very qualified to speak here.”

The Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy is part of GVSU’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. The leadership academy is a leader development program for over 60 undergraduate and graduate students at GVSU each academic year. These fellows are admitted for one or more years.

According the the Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy, through observation, mentoring, and practice, the fellows learn the behaviors and attitudes of ethical, effective leaders through more than seventy contact hours per fellow each year. One of the ways students advance their leadership skills and gain contact hours is learning from and interacting with accomplished local leaders through the Wheelhouse Talks speaker series.

The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies is presenting the Wheelhouse talk this Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Charles W. Loosemore Auditorium, located in the Richard M. DeVos Center at the GVSU Pew Campus. Sall’s Wheelhouse talk is free, but attendees must RSVP online at www.hausteincenter.org.