Students motivated all the way to Florida

By Lindsay Dick - Campus Editor

Six students won the chance to see motivational speaker Tony Robbins in Orlando, Fla. for free, all because they broke a board.

Anne King, professor of marketing is known to bring speakers into her classrooms to teach her students more about real-world experience. She looked to her old friend DeAnn Fitzgerald, O.D., to help her in this endeavor. Fitzgerald is an optometrist in her own practice on Williams Boulevard in Cedar Rapids. She is a philanthropist, having taken many service trips to Kenya and is also a student of motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

“I wanted to take a strong approach toward confidence building with some level of leadership development,” said King.

Fitzgerald decided to use some of Robbins’ approach to teach Mount Mercy students. This semester, she hired a personal trainer to come for 10 mornings and workout with eight students. Six of them finished.

For that, Fitzgerald is flying them all to Orlando to a Tony Robbins event where they will be joined by roughly 2500 other people, and offered the opportunity to fire walk and break a board again, like they did at the culmination of their training here on campus.

The Mount Mercy students who will be taking the trip include Julie Knight-Weidner, Erin Kistler, Nick Miller, Jamie Lane, Maranda Symmonette and Brandy McAllister.