Elon parents Howard C. and Judy Pickett of Cary, N.C., have made a $110,000 endowment gift to enhance the university’s Isabella Cannon Leadership Fellows program. The couple made the gift because of the transformative experience that their daughter, Hilaire, a senior, has had as a Leadership Fellow at Elon.
The Cannon Leadership Legacy Fund will support activities in the Leadership Fellows program and the Center for Leadership, including internships, grants for common good projects and related activities to deepen the leadership experience at Elon. As part of the Picketts’ $50,000 gift to establish the Legacy Fund, Elon will launch a campaign in the fall to raise a matching amount from alumni and friends of the program.
Hilaire Pickett Leadership Grants will be awarded to two Fellows in their junior or senior years to enable them to pursue internships or common good projects. The goal is to provide a minimum of $3,000 annually to support two $1,500 Leadership Grants. In the fourth year of the program, each Leadership Fellow takes on a common good project to create sustainable change in the community.
For her project, Hilaire examined the connections between the university and the 375 alumni of the Leadership Fellows program. As part of her work this year, she helped to bring back six leadership alumni to participate in Fellows Weekend and a Fellows panel, where graduates shared their personal and professional experiences with students.
“My mission was to create a foundation and a way to build relations with alumni of the program and bring them back to campus,” Hilaire says. “I realized alumni are a huge potential resource that we could tap into and bring them back to campus to share their experiences with students.
“To hear the experiences and personal stories of alumni in the program gives students the opportunity to see the benefits of the leadership program, and it’s going to give them the motivation to continue,” she says. “Alumni have a lot of knowledge because they are in the real world and can better prepare students for their future.”
Hilaire, a corporate communications major, says the gift means a lot to her and her family because “the Center for Leadership is where my heart is.” Hilaire says she shared her project and her vision for the leadership program with her father, who decided to make a gift to support her dream.
“The leadership program has given me so many resources, including the knowledge of working with other people and the theories of leadership, and it has given me some of the best friends of my life,” Hilaire says.