The recent Voices of Experience panel showed where William Peace University has come from and how much it has advanced.
Held in Kenan Hall on March 20, the event started with a Meet & Greet between Omicron Delta Kappa and alumni that lasted about 30 minutes during with students went around and spoke to alumni. At 6 p.m., President Brian Ralph welcomed everyone to the event.
Alumna Gayle McKoy Wilkins then introduced the two Keynote Address speakers: Kym Martin, executive director of the N.C. Center for Safer Schools and Mark Martin, chief justice of the state Supreme Court. The husband and wife discussed their path through their life and career.
Kym Martin discussed how she knew what she wanted to do for her career, which was being a teacher, which led to her leading the N.C. Center for Safer Schools. She talked about meeting her husband, having children, and with children how for a little bit she became a stay-at-home mom with a pre-school at home.
Mark Martin was the opposite of Kym. He did not know what he wanted to do for his future. Instead, he talked about how he was like others who are undecided. He has served North Carolina for 15 years for Supreme Court. Although he and his wife have separate jobs, they see each other because of how the jobs interact.
For the panelist section, Dustin Walker, a Peace senior, introduced the three speakers, Kristen Clark Wynns, Jennifer Vega Ruiz, and Leigh Clark Adams. Wynns and Adams are graduates from the first baccalaureate class in 1997, and Ruiz is a graduate from 1999.
Wynns is a child and adolescent psychologist with her own private practice. Her offices are in Cary and North Raleigh, Wynns Family Psychology. She stated how she was up on her contract from her job and they told her that the contract wasn’t going to be renewed; three weeks later, she decided to open up her own practice. Ten years later, her practice is still running, and she is married with two children..
Adams graduated with the first human resource major, and now she works as a senior recruiter with PPD, a leading global contract research organization providing drug discovery, development, life cycle management, and laboratory services. She has three children and is married.
Ruiz graduated from Peace and went straight to UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law and and earned her degree in 2002. She has been published nationwide, and been selected as Best Lawyers in America. She is married and has two children.
Students got to talk to the panelists after for any questions that they had. The purpose of this panel was for the students at William Peace to hear and understand that “If you want it, you can go for it.”