There are some people who can walk into a room full of teenagers and have them leaning forward, laughing, answering questions and, before they even realize it, thinking a little differently about the way they show up in the world.

Lisa Phillipson is one of those people.

Today, Lisa from Hospice of Southern Illinois spent the morning with our CEO students talking about soft skills. But honestly, calling it a lesson on “soft skills” doesn’t really capture what happened in the room.

One of the things I love about Lisa is the way she connects with people. She doesn’t stand at the front of the room and simply talk to a group of students. She talks to them.

She calls them by name throughout her presentation, often when they aren’t even the ones speaking. She remembers what they told her about themselves and works it naturally into the conversation. One minute she’s talking about trust, and the next she’s connecting that idea to someone’s future career. She’s talking about self-awareness and suddenly she’s using a student’s personality to make the point.

It sounds like a small thing, but it isn’t.

Being remembered makes you feel seen. And when a speaker makes 22 young people feel like they matter individually, they listen differently.

Lisa talked about handshakes and eye contact. About being on time. About saying thank you. About following through when you give someone your word.

But then she went deeper.

She talked about trust and had the students crumble a piece of paper in their hands before trying to smooth it back out.

“Trust is like a piece of paper,” she told them. “Once it’s crumbled, it can’t be perfect again.”

She talked about being self-aware enough to recognize how other people experience us. About being curious instead of judgmental because we rarely know the whole story someone is carrying. About making people feel included. About recognizing that we all bring different strengths to the table.

And then she asked them a question I hope sticks with them for a very long time:

What do you stand for?

That question has very little to do with a resume and everything to do with character.

I loved watching our students interact with Lisa throughout the morning. She challenged them, made them laugh, told them stories about her own life and wasn’t afraid to tell them about the times when she got things wrong, too.

That is one of the things I love most about CEO. Our students don’t just hear about what it means to be successful. They get to sit across the table from people who have lived it.

Ania served as our CEO of the Day today, helping lead our morning, and Patrick was behind the camera as our videographer, capturing pieces of the experience.

Lisa, thank you for giving our students your time, your stories and your honesty. You reminded them that being smart will take them far, but the way they treat people, the trust they build and the character they carry with them will matter just as much.

And somehow, between the laughter, the stories and hearing their own names woven into the conversation, I think a few of those lessons found their way in a little deeper than they expected.

Just another great morning in CEO.