Have you heard? ELFA member volunteers are hitting the road and speaking out about the benefits of working in the equipment finance industry. What’s driving this activity? The association’s Guest Lecture Program.

The Guest Lecture Program is a 30-minute presentation designed by industry experts to increase awareness of equipment leasing and finance and attract new talent to the industry. The program was conceived in 2012 when members of the Financial Institutions Business Council Steering Committee identified the need for a standard set of materials that ELFA members could use to educate others about the industry.

The presentation is available for download from ELFA website and it is customizable, allowing users to modify it to fit their audience, whether they are speaking to a university or at financing or banking institutions. Here are a few examples of how members are using the Guest Lecture Program.

Thunderbird School of Global Management

Equipment finance executives Jeff Dicosola of Great American Insurance Group, Will Tefft of CapitalSource and Ken Gorham of BB&T recently presented the Guest Lecture program to 25 students at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz.

  Dicosola (at right)

  Gorham (at left)

  Tefft

"The students were engaged and seemed to have interest in further researching the equipment finance and leasing business as a possible career choice," says Dicosola. "The school appreciated our efforts. If any ELFA member companies want to engage in recruiting there, let me know, I will provide you the school's contact who covers financial institutions.”

Darden Graduate School of Business

Bob Rinaldi of King Commercial Finance presented the program to students in the Finance Club at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business in Charlottesville, Va.

Rinaldi

The presentation was very well received and the Darden program coordinator noted the next day, "Over the last 12 hours I have received a half dozen raving emails from attendees of yesterday’s presentation. They really enjoyed it, learned a ton and wholeheartedly recommend me to invite [Bob] on a regular basis to talk in our Hot Topics in Finance class.”

Wharton Executive MBA Program

A team of equipment finance industry veterans made up of Scott Thacker of Ivory Consulting, Kris Snow of Cisco Capital, Chris Enbom of Allegiant Partners and Larry Smilie of Banc of America Leasing presented the program to 40 University of Pennsylvania Wharton Executive MBA Program students in San Francisco. The presentation focused on entrepreneurship and technology in the industry.

Snow, Enbom, Thacker and Smilie

After the Wharton presentation, Chris Enbom remarked, “ELFA has put together an excellent presentation we all can use as a recruitment tool. The industry will have a high turnover rate, especially with executives, over the next 10 years, and we need to be bringing bright people into the industry…The presentation…generated a great deal of interest in our industry.”

Get Involved

These are just a few examples of how member volunteers are using the Guest Lecture Program. We encourage you to download your copy and find ways to reach out across your organization and to local colleges and universities and help spread the word about this amazing industry. For questions or more information, or to share your story about using the Guest Lecture Program presentation, please contact Alexa Carnibella at acarnibella@elfaonline.org.