MU Serves As Presenting Sponsor of GFBJ Power Breakfast

Methodist University surrounded itself with some of the top business leaders in the city during the Greater Fayetteville Business Journal’s Power Breakfast.

On Tuesday, Sept. 20, hundreds of business trailblazers assembled at the Cape Fear Botanical Garden for a quarterly breakfast primarily geared towards networking. The University served as a presenting sponsor of the Power Breakfast, which came with the opportunity for Provost Suzanne Blum Malley to highlight for the audience the successes of MU’s students and alumni across Fayetteville and the state.

Some of the specific successes Blum Malley shared included:

• 40% of students are first-generation college students
• Methodist University is in the top 16% nationally and top 12% in North Carolina for overall social mobility of graduates (Opportunity Insights Project at Methodist University)
• MU’s demand-side economic impact to Cumberland County was nearly $88.5 million annually with a more than $116 million total impact on the state of North Carolina (Hanover Research)

“Our students develop civic-minded leadership skills and career readiness fueled by ethical and entrepreneurial thinking,” said Blum Malley. “They continually evolve their thinking beyond what they want to be so they intentionally explore who they want to be along with how and why they are called to respond to the world around them. We expect our graduates to do good things in the world and we expect to continue to be an economic driver of this community.”

The theme for this quarter’s Power Breakfast was “Managing Uncertainty,” and panel speakers included financial advisor Debbie S. Best, attorney Deanna L. Coleman, and CPA Kelly D. Puryear, who spoke about how leaders could guide their business and family through uncertainty from a financial, legal, and tax perspective.

For more information about the Greater Fayetteville Business Journal, head to their website.