CONCORD – “Go Beyond.” It’s Cannon School’s motto, and Upper School students are constantly challenged to explore what it means to lead.
Providing emerging student leaders with the tools to lead in a way that is both meaningful and manageable is what Upper School Deans Tom Booker and Natalie Hutchinson kept in mind while designing the school’s new Student Leadership Lunch Series, which is already garnering interest from other schools.
Booker and Hutchinson structured the inaugural year of the program around the book “If You’re Not the Lead Dog, the View Never Changes,” by William R. McKenzie Jr. Published in 2011, the book sketches out a leadership path for teens, and the chapters serve as the topics for 10 lunches attended by Cannon’s Upper School student leaders.
McKenzie, a father, a businessman with experience in various sectors, and a graduate of Davidson College and University of North Carolina, is the featured speaker for Cannon’s Leadership Lunch on Friday.
Joining McKenzie is Cannon School Alumna Maddie Colcord ’10. Colcord attends the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, majoring in health policy and management. Colcord is an emergency medical technician at her local fire department, a whitewater instructor and an accomplished sporting clay shooter. 
Booker explains, “These lunches are a chance for students to have courageous conversations confronting leadership issues like working with others, problem solving and servant leadership.”