The evening of Tuesday, Sept. 22, saw the first lecture in a University-sponsored leadership development series called MU Leads.

MU Leads, a series supported by Millikin’s Office of Student Inclusion and Student Engagement, along with help from the Department of Sociology and Organizational Leadership, is intended to “challenge participants to explore their unique leadership style, harness their potential and perform leadership in every facet of life.”

The first lecturer for the series was Corey Blake, who graduated from Millikin in 1996 with a BFA in theatre. Blake is a successful former actor, director and producer, who has focused his career on storytelling. He’s founder of The From the Barrio Foundation, a nonprofit corporation “committed to using author Robert Renteria’s life, business experience and role as a civic leader to help eliminate conditions that foster violence, delinquency, drugs and gangs.”

He’s also the founder and current president of Round Table Companies, which support “people who want to change the world by helping them write their signature book and build the necessary infrastructure to impact lives.”

Blake’s lecture, entitled “Leading with Love,” focused on the importance of vulnerable leadership and ways to make others feel comfortable so they’re more open to ideas.

First, Blake instructed the participants to engage in an “internal journey,” taking time to reflect on their current “state of being.” He emphasized the importance of intimacy and the vulnerability quotient through a story, in which he related a time when he was most vulnerable.

Blake describes vulnerability through an experience with Josh Edwards, his best friend and volleyball teammate from Millikin, a polarizing figure in his life. Josh grew up rough, with a tough mother, abuse in school and, Edwards said, “on the wrong side of the tracks…Yet he was the first brother I ever had. He had my back like no one I had ever experienced before.”

Blake goes on to describe the “highly toxic personality” of Edwards. After their senior year at Millikin, Blake, Edwards and two others moved to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the woman who came with them, dated Edwards, but Blake was in love with her. Vicious fighting broke out between Edwards and Blake, with Edwards threatening to kill Blake.

Blake said, “I was so terrified… that at that point, I did not feel safe anymore.” He closed the story by relating that Edwards grew more heavily addicted to alcohol and drugs, unfortunately his friend “drank himself to death, and at that point, I was completely vulnerable.”

The story of the Edwards-Blake relationship was used by Blake to illustrate that “vulnerability is sexy.” Blake said, “When we are able to express the thing that brings us the most pain, we are able to actually ‘see’ each other.” He indicated that vulnerability is an “invitation to be ‘seen’ as who you are in life.”

Blake summarized by pointing out the importance of vulnerability in human-to-human relationship and the brand-to-consumer relationship. His philosophy and advice to future leaders was stated thusly, “Only when you are truly ‘seen’…when you plant a flag in the ground for what you truly believe in…then, the universe can meet you there. If you are ambiguous, the world will not respond to you.”