Elizabeth Diley for NACE Board of Directors Nominations

Speaker: Elizabeth Diley, Campus TA Leader , General Mills

Elizabeth Diley: Hello, sourcing and nomination committee. My name is Elizabeth Daley and I lead campus recruiting for General Mills. General Mills is home to iconic brands like Cheerios, Nature Valley Granola bars. My personal favorite, Annie's Mac and Cheese. My kids would say lucky charms. Um I've been there for 16 years and all of my time, I've been in campus recruiting or internal staffing. I am a first generation college student and very proud to say that um neither one of my parents went on to um four year school in the community that I grew up. Um you know, going on to higher education after high school was sometimes just not obtainable, sometimes just not accessible and, and sometimes just not even valued. Um I grew up in rural Minnesota, graduated 58 kids in my high school class and only a handful of us went on to um get a bachelor's degree, navigating school and the admissions and funding with two parents that, you know, weren't familiar with the system. You know, they were even scared that like I was going on to get more school and leaving home um was really difficult and um I'm really proud that, you know, I was able to self fund school through three different jobs, graduate with a four year degree. And if you would have asked that girl at 18 when she started her undergrad and told her she was going to be leading strategy and the campus recruiting programming for the enterprise of a Fortune 200 company. She would have first said, what is a Fortune 200 company? But she said, absolutely. You're kidding? No, that's not, that's not what is in the cards for me. I didn't even know what the cards were or how to even play any of them. And that kind of leads me back to what motivates me to serve on the N A board of directors, you know, through community belonging, integrity, innovation and impact, you know, I feel my skill set and my story and my passion for being the voice of underrepresented students would really help drive the mission and the strategies that the board has been putting together and that the board in the future will continue to drive and, you know, through academia, private and public sector and the vendors we all use, we all need to band together and think about those voices. Um If it be first generation, if it would be, you know, some student um in the poc community, um a low income student, how do we continue to provide skills and resources and opportunity and curriculum to continue to drive students not only to get into school, you know, be a two year, four year, um, whatever that may look like, but how do we help them find jobs and find their voices? How do we continue to upskill them? Um, I want to thank you for your time today and hopefully you learning a little bit about me, um, was helpful in your.