By River Mitchell
@rivermitchell27
The Leadership Training Conference (LTC) is an annual conference for Springfield College students, typically happening in the week leading up to Thanksgiving break. Through this conference, a select few Springfield College students had the opportunity to contribute to a book, with the brainpower behind it coming from Springfield alum and former LTC facilitator Matt Joseph.
The book, titled Next-Gen Leaders, is a collection of stories and narratives from the 2023 LTC facilitator board. This also shares the perspectives and desires of these students who want to become leaders one day, each writing one chapter in the book surrounded by a certain word or phrase they believe is essential to effective leadership. Students Maggie Donahue, Simon Hauser, Kyle Johnson, Keeley Joyal, Dominique LaBranche, Emma Rodjenski, Ally Toppa and advisor Angela Veatch all wrote chapters for the book.
For Toppa, her chapter surrounded a quote she lives by to this day: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
“Through this process, I felt that I was truly able to embody this quote, and learned that the words and stories I hold have some sense of power, and may be able to be the catalyst for change that someone else may need,” Toppa said. “I’ve learned through this process how to embrace myself and use my voice for the purpose larger than myself.”
Joseph allowed each leader to write their chapter how they saw fit – giving the students complete artistic liberty.
“Matt gave us a lot of creative freedom in how we wanted to approach our chapter and what we wanted to include,” Donahue said. “It was really special to be able to incorporate my own experiences and values into my writing, and see how the other board members integrated their unique perspectives on leadership.”
The original idea for the book came from Joseph, as the authors connected with Joseph through another Springfield alum who did LTC. He had originally come to the campus to speak with them, and after leaving, reached back out to the board with the idea of creating a book.
“In our conversations with Matt, he shared his vision and passion for creating a platform that allowed young, next-generation leaders to share their stories and words to leaders past and present, and leaders to come,” Toppa said. “This has been almost a year-long process of exploration, development and connecting our stories into one.”
Throughout this process, it’s not only been an opportunity for contributors of the book to share their own personal stories about leadership, but they’ve also been able to learn more about themselves and grow.
“The process of writing this book forced me to reflect on my experiences and think more intentionally about my beliefs on leadership,” Donahue said. “I finally took the time to look back on my journey and consider how my leadership has evolved over the years. Reflecting on all that I have done, I learned that I am capable of making so much more of a difference than I ever realized.”
The book has now been completed, and is being sold on Amazon for $9.99 on Kindle and $18.85 in paperback. For both Donahue and Toppa, it’s been very rewarding to see the finished product after roughly a year in the making.
“It is incredibly rewarding to see our vision come to life,” Donahue said. “Writing this book presented a variety of challenges, but those obstacles ultimately made the process so much more rewarding at the end of it all.”
“Seeing the final product of the heart, the hard work and the commitment to the program that all of the authors put into the work has been such an incredible and fulfilling process, and has honestly been so prideful,” Toppa said. “I feel so lucky to be a part of such a powerful, authentic group of people who share their stories to be a part of something bigger than themselves.”