Leadership Lingo (w/ Mateo Portelli)

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You're listening to locally produced programming created in a UNV studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5. Ladies and gentlemen, you're ready.

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Are you ready?

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Are you ready? Ready.

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I'll brainstorm this later.

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We'll edit it later for now.

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Welcome to leadership.

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Lingo.

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My name is Matteo Portelli.

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Matteo Portelli.

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Today, we'll be hearing from a few folks and their experiences as leaders and find out the best principles and practices that make our community a better place. Welcome to Leadership Lingo. Now I've never been to the Philippines and I've been to Connecticut once, but we have

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a special friend of mine in the studio today who's been to both.

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Born in the Philippines, grew up in Connecticut. He's a senior studying economics, graduating next semester. Congratulations on that. And he's a current senator for the Lee Business School.

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John Toledo, thanks for being on Leadership Lingo. Thank you for having me.

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Well, I mean, especially, you know, we're talking to the future right now, but I really appreciate you coming during spring break, man. How's your spring break been?

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How many days has it been since we started a day?

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I think it's, what is it, Wednesday? So I guess, oh God, it's Tuesday, so two.

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Two days, okay. Pretty good. Just going to clubs. Yep. Having fun.

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Very good. Awesome, man. Is that the plan for the rest of the week, too?

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Pretty much.

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Yeah, it's a pretty good Vegas college lifestyle. What brought you to UNLV? Because I can't imagine many other universities in the country that have as good of a nightlife as Vegas.

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Well, I didn't really go here for the parties. People told me UNLV wasn't a party school, it was a commuter school. But I really just went here because, you know, a lot of Filipinos are here, good diversity, good culture, good food, Spring Mountain. So yeah, it's pretty much.

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So the clubs are just a bonus then?

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I get, yeah.

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Well, I just recently started going like in January, but it's been really fun. Very cool, man.

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I turned 21 last November, and I really have yet to flex those those new legal privileges. Oh, you're like a month Younger than me. Hmm, October 12. Yep. I'm November 12. Oh, that's exactly a month. It's pretty crazy. Does that make you Scorpio? I don't know how that works Libra. Okay, I'm Scorpio. I've been told Now what that means? I don't really know I will say that when I was in CSUN way back when, like beginning of last year, I was told by at least two other senators, oh you're such a Scorpio. I'm like, dude, I just don't want student's dollars to be wasted. That was my impetus for joining CSUN. But you've been

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a senator for how long now? On and off about a year now. Wow. First time was sophomore I remember I broke a golf cart and then left. Oh my gosh. And then I came back and said, sorry for the golf cart guys, but I'm back. Now I can't drive them, but.

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Well, it's good to have consequences for mistakes, but I'm glad you're in the Senate. In fact, I remember when you went up for appointment, I thought you had a phenomenal story. And it's always good to see students of any background, any religion, any race, whatever, interested in serving their neighbors and their fellow students. I think it's a good thing. I've known you for a while now, and I've always known you to be that kind of person, to have those difficult discussions. So I appreciate you being in CSUN. So my first question on that point would be, why do you think students get involved at CSUN? You know, we've got 25,000 undergraduates on campus. CSUN is by no means the most powerful student government association in the country, but you know, we've got over a million dollars in operating budget. It's nothing to laugh at. Why do you

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think folks like you, like me, and like other folks get involved in CSUN? Well, I think everyone has their own reason, but in my perspective, from what I've seen in CSUN, being in here for a good amount of time. It's either obviously the resume fillers, there are people who are truly, you know, wanting to make a difference on campus, and there are people who just get in through like chance or something. Like me, when I first got into CSUN, it was honestly completely by chance. I saw an application in the email, and all of a sudden I'm walking into a room with like a bunch of people in suits and I'm like saying a speech about my Pizza club and they laugh and they're like welcome to see sit down like what? Okay, I guess I'm a senator now, but um so yeah, that's the way I see it people get involved in CSUN because those three reasons and Obviously nobody wants to like Because I seen a lot of senators and CSUN come in and some of them, obviously, there are people who just go in, vote, and then go home. Sometimes they don't do their work. And the other ones, they really do everything in their power to try to make this campus better. And I feel like people have this kind of grandiose kind of thought about student government that I can't get in because I don't know what to do. But I literally got in and I had no idea what to do. But over time, I found a way to make my time there worth it and it wasn't just by kind of, you know, funding like to save the spotted owl or something. It wasn't that. It was just tiny, small things that you can do and over time they build up. But just something like reaching out to an RSO, making sure they have their funding in place, and reaching out to students and letting them know we have resources on campus. Those tiny, small things add up. So the people who are, I guess, getting to CSUN just because they got randomly put in or because it's a resume filler, over time, I've noticed them to also get into the groove of how to operate and what to do. Because there's obviously, there are people who are overachievers in CSUN who try to like change everything and like try to add in new sponsorships like all the time. And those people are great, like those people honestly kind of carry CSUN too. But on a day to day, it's really the small things that add up that I realized. That's why I believe everyone has a place in CSUN, no matter if you have a plan or not, I didn't have a plan. I just did a small tiny administrative things day to day, and then eventually it works out.

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That's awesome. What would you say does the day to day look like for a CSUN senator? Because I understand that, I mean, I got paid, I assume you still get paid, I'm pretty sure it's baked into the bylaws. And it's an important responsibility to be accepting those student tuition dollars, and we have to use them wisely. So what does the day to day look like for a senator?

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Well, we only have meetings like I think every week that's an academic week. So the day-to-day is really totally up to how you make it out to be. You can choose to go to meetings one time a week or two times a week for your committee and general senate and that's it. You don't do anything because according to the bylaws, that's all you have to do to stay as a senator. But in my case, I like to reach out to the RSOs that we funded in Ways and Means. I like to reach out to RSOs that we haven't funded. I have friends who are RSO leaders and I always reach out to them saying, hey, this is how much left in the budget. You should probably get your budget down and I'll help them with that. So to me, that's my day-to-day making sure that we can fund these RSOs. But again, that's not something I'm really obligated to do. It's more like something that I realized I can help with and I decide to do that myself But obviously other senators they have their own day-to-day, but I Try to do a lot more than what is required for the bylaws even though they don't pay me that much But hey, that's okay now. I understand that you represent the lead business school Do you work with lead business admin or faculty as well, or what does that relationship look like? I typically only work with the Dean's office whenever I need a table in there. There is something that I've really wanted to do before I leave, and it's, because it just rained today. You're talking to the future selves, too.

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It just rained today.

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I swear to God, every time it rains, the business school is flooding. Absolutely.

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Very much flooded.

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And I know why, it's because they have canopies

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instead of a roof.

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Correct, there's no roof, yeah. It's the only building on campus that rains inside. Try to think. It's like a donut. It's like a giant cavity. It's something I wanted to reach out to facilities management or something or maybe the dean's office there and see if there's like options. Get another canopy. I mean they could just literally put a tarp or something to

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cover the little holes. No, that's a really good point actually. Wow. Yeah, I remember when I was an engineering major, because I'm a former computer science major, and I love comp sci, do IT on the civilian side, and I'm not good at math, so that's why I switched over to history. But when I was a senator for the College of Engineering, it was not super easy to get a hold of folks. I've had various computer science majors tell me, like, we wish that the TBE building was open until midnight, you know, we wish that there were more computers in this spot. So students obviously have a lot of concerns. It's clear to me that not always are those concerns effectively translated to faculty. I also know that senators are not supposed to be ambassadors for the college, right? Their job is to go to the CSUN meetings, not necessarily go to the Dean's office meeting. So I'm sympathetic to that. Do you think that CSUN's, what would you say, outreach efforts could be improved? Like, what have you seen? Because I know you've been a CSUN officer for a while now. You know, we're at the involvement fair, I know we table a lot, but where are some avenues do you think that CSUN could do better to improve outreaching to students?

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There is a really good example I have of this. We had a meeting once about, do you know the dark side on campus? And for people who don't know, it's the STEM side where it's mostly dark. Now, I think it's all fixed, all the lights, but before a lot of the lights were broken and it was very dark. And there was a really interesting meeting that happened in CSUN where a lot of the senators got really mad that we weren't doing enough to help the situation. And they wanted more outreach and like more people to like fix it, right? And then the then President Isaac Hernandez, he told us that it's everything's on the rebel safe app, you can just report it on there. And it'll get fixed by maintenance. But the senators still wanted, I guess a plan or something, some sort of action, something visible that we can do. But the solution was already there. So I say this because in terms of outreach, it's completely up to the senators if how much they want to do. Like I said, there is a minimum that we have to do, and that's in the bylaws. Meetings, committee meetings, and attendance. That's it. But the senators themselves and like people in... I see executive branch really active. Usually, obviously, it makes sense because, again, they're executive. They really represent the general population. We only represent our colleges. But that being said, for outreach, all the senators had to do to fix the lights wasn't to pass a bill, like get more money or something, or talk to someone. All they had to do was go out at night, maybe band together a group of senators and take pictures of the lights, submit those. Right now they're all fixed. I think they hired more patrol officers to take pictures, but we could have also done that. But I say this because in terms of outreach and how effective CSUN is outreaching, it can be very effective so long as we actually outreach, because it takes me at least three weeks for some people to respond to me for like things that are very simple, like maybe a student comes to me with an idea and I email senators about it. And it takes like a good amount of time before we even get a response and then a follow-up and then we have to talk to all these people, set up meetings and that is at least two months because our outreach kind of drive is not very high. Yeah, I mean, I remember I've got,

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I don't know what it is, maybe it's because I'm first gen or what, but I enjoy talking to folks who are tabling, doesn't matter who, whenever there's an RSO who's tabling, it's gonna be a rare day that I don't go up to them. And every single time I've asked an RSO if they've received their CSUN funding, maybe 80% of the time they say, I don't know what that is. 20% of the time they say, I don't know how. They're aware of it, but I don't know how. And I'll usually tell them, like, well, hey, here's how to look up who your senator is, you know, I'll give them the website. And I don't know if it's a bureaucracy thing, because trust me, again, you have over 400 undergraduate RSOs, over 450 in total, and of course we give money to non-student groups such as universities, sponsorships, and whatnot. So we do give money out, but it's clear that at least a sizable minority of students who would benefit from this funding either don't know how to or don't have the assistance. I don't know what the solution is to that because it might be like a cultural problem. Like you said yourself, you enjoy going to students and helping. Maybe our own senators, especially new freshman senators, and I don't mean freshman, you know what I mean, especially new were senators, maybe they don't know, right? Because they're literally new, so they're also learning. So I don't know what your thoughts are on to improve that process.

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So I have been helping the Lee Women in Business Club for at least a year now with their funding because they had a lot of problems. All I had to do was just, because I was friends with the president, all I had to do was just text them and they would tell me the information. I'd tell that to the chair of Ways and Means and they would talk and they'd help each other. A lot of the RSOs also have problems with, and so in Ways and Means we have liaisons like senators assigned to our so's to check up on But our really only requirement in that is sending the required email to let them know the meeting right and the required follow-up Let them let me know of the general Senate meeting so after that, it's just collecting receipts at the end and I think that should be it, but there's nothing like basically, I feel like a lot of people in CSUN sometimes just do the bare minimum as required by the bylaws. And I'm guilty of that too. But it's really a big disservice to the people who we're funding because they're left in the dark with a lot of this stuff. Not because we're like hiding things, it's just because sometimes I guess we don't have time to reach out to them. So in my view to solve this, it would be just to honestly just send text like maybe just give out senators like google voice numbers and then just send text to them like because i don't know why emails are really hard for people to to respond to i don't know if the gen z thing i do yeah i'm on my emails 24 7 but yeah because you're a business major but um i feel like just having a nice google voice on their like bottom of the bio just to reach them real quick, I feel like I would solve a lot of things because then they'll actually look at those rather than sending emails that, again, I'm kind of salty about this, that people don't respond to for months. Yeah, no, I think you're right.

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I think, and everything about college is professional development. I mean, that's why we started Leadership Lingo, is to help people in their professional development and learn from leaders like yourself. So in the months that you've been in CSUN, and I'm sure you've been involved, you mentioned that you've been helping lead women in business. You obviously have had a hand in advising a lot of RSOs. What are some positives or values that you've seen both in CSUN and outside of CSUN that have proven to be beneficial to organizations? Basically, what advice would you give to some organizational leaders? Especially if they're trying to break into CSUN and trying to push for advocacy.

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Know what you want to advocate for because a lot of people want to be leaders and they want to like be, you know, to influence things. But some people make it too general. I know what I'm advocating for in CSUN, safety for students, sexual violence prevention. Because in business, we call this specialization makes efficiency. So the more you specialize in something that you want to advocate for, something really small, but something you can be a professional on, like know 100% what you need to do, know the people you need to talk to, know what the numbers are. I feel like that's what makes a good leader, is if you know what the problem is you want to solve, and you know it by heart. Some people like to advocate for, like things are way too broad. I don't want to give an example, but some leaders just are all over the place. Like they want to fix this, do this, increase this. But at the end of the day, if you overexert yourself way too much and if you are like too over-encompassing with your problems, then none of them will get solved. You will actually do a disservice to the people who are like trusting you to be their leader the more that you don't know what you're doing, obviously the less you'll get. So in me, I feel like that's the biggest thing that I've learned in college, and the biggest thing I've used as a leader in working in corporate is that specialization creates efficiency. So I've decided to specialize in a few key things, know them by heart, back of my hand, and it's been working out really good because then I know who to talk to, how to actually get things done and show results.

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What's a good working definition of leadership? And that's kind of a big question, but what's a good definition of leadership that you've seen, especially in interacting with other student leaders? And of course, you know, your corporate background.

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Like a sentence to define leadership?

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Yeah, yeah, how would you define leadership?

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And here's a qualifier,

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because of course you mentioned specialization and that's you know reaching into my military background. That's the cornerstone of the army, right? Every soldier has general orders, every soldier goes through basic combat training, so we all have the basics together but we're only valuable because we have specific jobs. But not every person who's a specialist goes on to be a sergeant, right? Not every person is designed to be a leader at all times, right? We all change roles at various times in our lives and of course depending on circumstance, right? So in the absence of leadership or in the absence of poor leadership, those are those are appropriate times to ascend but Specialization alone can't be in at least my estimation specialization alone doesn't make the market a good leader So in your experience, what would you say is a good leader? people who

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Can rally people and people that people follow because you don't have to be like the president of something to be the leader obviously People who are presidents obviously have the title right but maybe they don't listen You know people who are like these high up roles and businesses sure they have the title But up sometimes they don't listen to that person. They listen to like some like a lawyer or something I'd say they're the leader they listen to like the person below the president like the someone in like the Senate or something I say they're the leader. And something as you know, I'm a kind of a history nerd, but in China, way back in when after Mao was deposed, the most powerful person in China wasn't the president, it was actually, I don't remember, it was like the prime minister or something, but they weren't like the head of the party. They were the person who was the most popular and the person who people believed and entrusted and I feel like that's what makes a leader is somebody who can elicit trust because of their expertise and can elicit a following because of that trust. It doesn't matter what your role is, anybody can be a leader I feel like even if you're like what a cashier or something and people hate the manager right so obviously the person who's cashier is going to take the lead on most things because they follow that person. The manager can just be a placeholder or something, just take the money. But the real leader would be the person who actually is getting people to rally and getting people motivated and to trust them. So that's a leader, someone you can trust because of their expertise and someone who can be followed because of that trust.

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That's a really good definition. It's probably one of my favorite ones that we've had so far. What advice would you give to somebody? It could be one of your colleagues or it could be somebody who's interested in running for the Senate this fall, but what advice would you give to someone who not only wants to do a good job, right? And I'm sure they'll get really good mentorship with our new administration and I'm sure they'll be prepared on paper. But what advice would you give them if they one day want to be that leader or not even just be, you know, let's take away the title for a sec, if they want to be trusted, if they want to be reliable, maybe respond to emails.

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That's a start. They've been doing pretty good at that too. As for a new administration in student government, you're saying, to build trust, I feel like it would take, because the current administration is really trying to build trust as well, but obviously they're kind of really busy with a lot of things Hmm maybe Showing a public face of I guess appreciation But then again, I believe in trust Trusting actions not really trusting words because anyone can say anything. So maybe if they showed that they actually were going to push on the initiatives they promised for, they show they're willing to work with the people who may have been on opposing sides and stuff, I feel like that's a leader worth trusting. But I wouldn't trust a leader that just says things. I'd trust – frankly, if they didn't say anything at all to us, zero words, but they did things to support us, did things to make their promises fulfilled, and helped us with that. I would trust them more than a leader who would coddle us all the time and go to meetings with us and say, hey, thank you for being here. I'd trust them more than someone who did that.

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Let's kind of push it, or let's change tracks a little bit talking about not so much CSUN as an operation and as an entity, but more of the brand of student government, right? So if we look at UNR, we look at CSM, we look at other universities who also are huge, right? We're talking tens of thousands of students. There's a reason why people come to UNLV, right? Whether it's because we're number one in the world for hospitality, whether it's because we do have a nationally ranked business school, we're just now starting to really dive into engineering, hopefully Rebel Psycho as well, I'd really like to go into space. So, you know, UNLV is really growing as an institution. I think that students should have, you mentioned trust, confidence in where their money goes. And of course, every single student, they consent by enrolling, but you know, they don't really negotiate how much they give to student government. It's about $2 for every credit hour they take goes to their student government. I don't think most students know that, and I think when they learn that, their ears perk up, they really start to pay attention. At least I've had people say, like, oh shoot, when's the next meeting, right? going forward, you know, for the remainder of your tenure, term in office and looking to the new administration that will be coming in in a few weeks. I wonder what we can do as student leaders to just remind students that student government exists, because it's not supposed to be this sort of this sort of like, head down, everybody has to wear a tie, although I'm very pro professional dress. I'm very pro business attire. But you know what I mean. The point of it isn't to role play. The point of student government is to help RSOs, it's to help Greek life, it's to help students with the money that they pay in. So I guess my question to you would be, what would you like to see CSUN turn into going forward of course, because you mentioned trust and that's good and again, we'll hopefully try to keep our leaders accountable in that way. But sort of more abstractly, by the time you graduate, what would you like students to have, what opinion, excuse me, would you like students to have of CSUN?

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Hopefully any opinion so that they know that it exists, first off. But I feel like one That people get turned off with by CSUN There was a meeting Three to three weeks ago and next to us was the Filipino Club They were having like a little get-together and they were playing musical chairs and everything. They were being really loud So and we love fast about Yeah, and a few people from the meeting went over there and said hey guys, can you guys keep it down? Hmm, right and then my friend told me he was at the meeting too, when Suez came up to tell them to lower the volume, someone screamed out, blank C, son, what do they ever do for us? And I feel like that, obviously it was like a little snarky comment, but it made me start thinking, what have we been doing that affects all the students. I feel like a lot of people don't know about CSUN because it hasn't affected them too much. Besides the $2 a credit thing, but it hasn't really given like a big kind of impact. Because I remember back when I was a senator in Karen Yap's administration and they passed, it was like a DACA, I forgot what it was. It was a scholarship for... Are you talking about to pay CSUN employees who are not... It had something to do with DACA. I thought it was for the undocumented student. Yeah, undocumented. Yeah. I remember they did that and that got a lot of attention and that was when a lot of people knew about CSUN back then. I remember that too because sometimes I'd go down to the Starbucks and have the badge just for a little clout.

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Just for some clout, yeah. Hey, can I get a student discount, please? I'm kidding, that doesn't exist.

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Sadly, and they were like, oh, you're in CSUN. I was like, yeah, but then now, sometimes, especially when the thing with Isaac and the thing with the other people were going on in CSUN.

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He's the same.

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Oh, Isaac and Kevin, yeah. When they were having their whole kind of issues, I feel like a lot of people didn't know about CSUN because they didn't care anymore because it wasn't doing too much for them besides the drama. So sometimes I would actually take off the badge when I get Starbucks. And I just think that the way to get CSUN on the books on like the radar again for students is if we can really push for something to help the students obviously because they'll only care if you know we actually help them, rather than just having these leaks on Reddit and having these little drama, little clicks going on and everyone's like, oh, CSUN, that toxic place? Rather than having it like that, they'll be like, oh, CSUN, that place that gave us those newspapers or something, or the place that gave me my New York Times subscription or something. Yeah, little things like that.

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Yeah, I don't know if people know, you can get Canva for free, Canva Pro for free with your RebelMail, and I'm like 80% sure that's thanks to CSUN negotiating. That might not be thanks to CSUN but I only learned about it through CSUN so that you know there there are definitely certain perks that students receive thanks to student government so I think action speaking louder than

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words is never more true when it comes to government. Well in this case though the bad actions speak louder than the good actions so we really have to do a lot of good right now in order to make sure that people have people know about us one and people know about us for the right reasons to right now there are people that know about us but there are a lot of people that know about us for wrong reasons like the really bad toxic reasons so I think that's what a CSUN needs to work on. Okay very good well I mean I really appreciate your time on the show today John I'm curious if there's any business excuse me there's any business students listening, if they wanted to get in touch with you in your capacity as their senator, how can folks reach out to you? I have a page on the CSUN website. You can just go to CSUNUNLV, click Legislative Branch, and find John Toledo. And my email's there, and so is my Google Voice number. I'm a I really appreciate your time.

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30 minutes flies by when you're talking about helping people. I hope to have you on the show again. Matt Thiessen, JFK, and Matt Thiessen, Jr.

0:29:45
I hope to have you on the show again.

0:29:46
I hope to have you on the show again.

0:29:47
Sounds good.

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I'll talk to you later. Thanks. If you want to find out more information about the folks we interviewed here today or just learn more, you're more than welcome to follow us at Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn at LeadershipLingo. You can also shoot me an email at matteo at leadershiplingo.show. That's M-A-T-E-O at leadershiplingo.s-h-o-w. We'll catch you next time. We'll catch you next time. Stay safe, stay hydrated, have a great day.

Transcribed with Cockatoo