Noah Manning '17 on Management and Leadership

The Management and Leadership Development Program (MLDP) is a one-term program that teaches students theoretical and practical skills through presentations with experts and professors. Each student has the opportunity to go off campus to meet with someone in the Upper Valley community and see leadership in action.

Noah Manning ’17, a Biology major, participated in MLDP in the spring of his junior year. He became involved with the program because he wanted to improve his leadership abilities as he took on new responsibilities in campus organizations. The off campus experience Noah attended was at LISTEN, a nonprofit that uses the proceeds from a chain of thrift stores to support programs for the poor. During this session, the executive director LISTEN spoke about how if clients do not have trust in the non-profits that serve them, then the non-profits cannot serve them well. Trust is the foundation of a good working relationship. Clients need to know that your priority is to serve them and their needs first and foremost.

Noah had the opportunity to intern at Health Leads, a nonprofit based in Boston, during the summer of 2016. It was during this experience that the themes he had discussed at LISTEN took on a new importance.

“I saw first hand the importance of this trust as I spent time ensuring the information we provided to clients was accurate and up to date,” says Noah, “if we told a client that a food shelf was open on a Tuesday and the food shelf’s hours had changed, the client would begin to lose faith that we would be telling them the truth. That is not a good relationship to have with a client.”