We wrapped up our Summer Leadership Program yesterday with an Industry Day and an Awards Luncheon. Our Industry day consisted of tours of Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Pepperidge Farm, and Publix Dairy Plant.

At Lakeland Regional, we were able to tour 5 different areas of the hospital including the pediatrics unit, cath labs, emergency room, ICU, & operating rooms. Our participants enjoyed learning more about LRMC and finding that it is the 5th largest hospital in Florida, has the busiest emergency room, and is home to two of the the da Vinci system robots that help to overcome the limitations of traditional laparoscopic technology.

Next we headed over to Pepperidge Farm where the smell of goldfish and freshly baked bread were sensational! We enjoyed a tour of the facility and saw how goldfish, crackers, bread and buns are made. The guys at Pepperidge farm gave us all goody bags with goldfish, bread and cookies… yum!!

Our last tour of the day was Publix Dairy plant. The group saw and learned all about ice cream, milk, cottage cheese, as well as the process of making milk and tea cartons. We were lucky enough to be able to get our hands on some delicious Publix Ice Cream after lunch.

Our Awards Luncheon was hosted by Jeff Chamberlain, Director of Real Estate Strategy at Publix Corporate office and lunch was provided by Robert Lee from  Publix Chinese Kitchen. Our Awards Luncheon was a great opportunity to get participants, supervisors, high skill investors, tour guides, guest speakers, leadership speakers, and all those involved in the program together to celebrate. Callie Neslund from the Office of State Representative Seth McKeel, Ginger Gonzalez from WellDyneRx, Michelle Crawford from American Compliance Technologies, Adam Justice from Polk Museum of Art and Angel Gonzalez from CenterState Bank gave some wonderful testimonies of the program, which you will be able to find here in a few days. Leah Bartholomay from Polk State College was also kind enough to make a video of the program which also contained some great testimonials by Maggie Chaffin  and Diana Bornik from LRMC and Daniel Brown from Saddle Creek Corporation. Katherine and Meg gave out some fun awards to the participants including:

King and Queen of the Jungle Gym: Tom Speno & Christina Ellis
Runner up… Callie Neslund
Most likely to be on America’s Best Dance Crew: Amber Bizzarri & Angel Gonzalez
Most likely to collect ‘murses’: Eric Click
Best Dressed: Michael Mutz
Best Attendance: Michelle Crawford
Best Spotlight Picture: Christine Hansen
Best Hospitality: Gregor Ruthven
Mr. Congeniality: Clay Gard
Best Photo Expressions: Daniel Brown

We are so thankful to all those who made this program a success and look forward to finish up the program with our last social at a Lakeland Flying Tigers Game on Saturday at 6pm.