The NC SkillsUSA Chapter made its annual trip to Atlanta on October 23 to attend the second 2RE Fall Leadership Conference. 2RE stands for Reach, Recruit, and Engage, and the SkillsUSA facilitators and officers trained the seven NC students to become better leaders in their chapters.

Led by advisers Michael Barcarse and Dan Knode, the students started the trip off traveling to the WGCL TV Station to observe how people in the television industry handle their jobs. The tour started out in the control room talking to director Nick Morrissey on how one should approach joining the industry.

“It’s all about experience in this world. Where you go to school has some impact, but people are only going to hire you if you’ve worked live shows before,” Morrissey said.

After seeing the control room, the guide led the students to the newsroom, where they met with producers and anchors to talk about the types of shifts one should adapt to when working in this industry. Connected to the newsroom, the studio contained monitors, cameras, and lights. With all the gadgets mesmerizing the chapter, it made sense that the last destination ended up being the studio.

Once the tour wrapped up, everyone headed to the Sheraton hotel for the conference. The conference began with a general opening session where the SkillsUSA State Officers introduced everyone to their teams and what they would do during their team meetings. After the Officers presented their information, they gave the spotlight to motivational speaker Shannon Oleen, who talked about her occupational background and how anyone in any situation can persevere through anything.  

When the opening session ended, students broke off into their separate teams. Since seniors Josh Dawson and Turner Markwalter attended last year’s 2RE conference, SkillsUSA assigned them on different teams from the other members of the NC chapter. While in the team sessions, the students who did not attend the first 2RE Conference took part in various activities, such as a game called cup tower.

“We had to build this cup tower only using a rubber band and having our other group members pull strings to guide the cups, and it was beneficial because it taught us how to work under pressure,” senior Daniel MacAnn said.

On the second day of the conference, the team session included various ways of improving speech writing by following the “P.O.W.E.R.R.” method. This method stands for  pre-work, outlook, wisdom, engage, review, and reflection to ensure that every speech written effectively touches and moves people.

To conclude the 2RE Fall Leadership Conference, a closing session took place in the main ball room, allowing the NC chapter to hear who won each competitions. Seniors Josh Dawson, Turner Markwalter, Rylan Kelly,Nolan Moore, junior Emily Lapierre, and sophomore Taylor Mason all received the Georgia Statesmen Award, and Dawson won first place for the 2RE Promotional Video contest.

“It was a real honor to receive the Statesmen Award, my hard work finally got its recognition,” Mason said.