69 // � e Legacies of Elon’s Leaders

Ross WadePHOTO BY JUSTINE SCHULERUD

� e Legacies of Elon’s Leaders // 70P

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Ross Wade

For Ross Wade, leadership means helping others become leaders. Wade became Elon’s fi rst Assistant Director of Career Services for the School of Communications two years ago. In the short time he’s been at the university, he has helped students transition out of the Elon bubble and into their careers.

“Everything is for the students,” Wade said. “Frankly, I see how hard they work and that inspires me to work just as hard, because it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

To Wade, the most important thing is for students to feel valued. He loves encouraging them to tackle internships and leadership positions and do what they really care about.

“I’ve never had a mentor, and I’ve never really had anyone say, ‘You’re special, and I want to help you become such and such.’ I think that’s what has inspired me to be a leader myself so I can be that for other people,” Wade said. “I feel like everyone deserves that.”

Wade especially enjoys working with students one-on-one, because each student’s goals, dreams and personality are different. He loves hearing success stories from students who have graduated and seeing students realize that their goals are attainable.

“I guess my success is determined by the success of my students,” Wade said. “I’ll feel really good, if in 10 years I have students who are not only successful in their job but happy in their job.”

Wade said he has no idea how he came to be considered a leader at Elon, other than that he took on a job no one else had done before.

“I’m the fi rst person to have this position in the School of Communications, so in a sense I had to pioneer it,” Wade said. “I had to make it my own.”

Professor of Communications David Copeland, who calls Wade “Ross Wade Superstar,” thinks Wade has

made his mark on Elon in the two years he has been on staff at the university.

“Ross Wade is a perfect example to Elon students of someone who commands respect because of his great knowledge about how to fi nd jobs and best present oneself to potential employers, and because he naturally relates to students,” Copeland said. “He uses his own experiences as a means to lead students.”

Before going to graduate school and starting his job at Elon, Wade worked a “hodgepodge” of media jobs, ranging from production company jobs to TV internships. He received a piece of advice that has stayed with him from a co-worker at the Raleigh-based multimedia production company Centerline Productions: “Never come to me with a problem. Always come to me with a solution.”

“People always know what the problem is, but they rarely know what the solution is,” Wade said. “So if you can provide that, that’s something meaningful.”

Wade’s other leadership infl uences range from Associate Dean of the School of Communications Connie Book to humorist David Sedaris.

“[Sedaris] is just utterly himself,” Wade said. “He makes no excuses about who he is or where he comes from, and he’s becoming very successful off of that.”

Copeland thinks Wade uses a similar tactic of just being himself to lead others.

“He’s simply a great leader, because we can see ourselves in him and see how well he has turned out,” Copeland said. “He leads by example, he leads through his great knowledge base, he leads through his caring attitude and he leads because we see through Ross that going the extra mile no matter the subject will pay dividends.”

Story By Alexa Milan

CAREER CENTER SUPERSTAR

GET TO KNOWRoss Wade

Arrived at Elon in 2008

Hometown: Durham, NC

“Never come to me with a problem. Always come to me with a solution.” - Former co-worker at Centerline Productions