Meaningful Leadership Experiences as a First-Class Private with Will Nicholson ’21

Peer-to-peer leadership is the most challenging leadership position, particularly when rank (or job title) doesn't require your peers to follow you or respond to your requests. 

For this installment of the VMI Leader Journey podcast, we chose to highlight a First-Class cadet whose leadership example has been nonetheless meaningful. 

 We welcomed Officer of the Guard Association president, the cadet-in-charge (CIC) for the Cadets' Superintendents Advisory Board (CSAB), and a computer science and engineering major Will Nicholson VMI class of 2021 to sit down with us for this interview.  He shared with us how he came to be in a variety of leadership positions, how he's learned from both his coursework and relationships with staff and faculty, some of his thoughts on VMI's Honor System, and his thoughts about the current state of the corps during this pandemic semester.

Some leadership competencies covered in the conversation were self-development, mentoring, helping others, empathy, and receiving feedback.