Student Senator Kyle Hudson uses knowledge of business to lead
Richard Decker
Staff Writer
Student Senate Secretary Kyle Hudson has been using his business and innovation skills long before stepping foot on Hudson Valley’s campus last year.
In high school, he participated in Hudson Valley’s early college Training and Education Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing and Alternative and Renewable Technologies, or TEC-SMART, program.
“For the 17 high schools that participated, we all sent representatives and for half the day you [did] research-intensive projects rather than lectures and classes, in addition to taking two Hudson Valley classes per semester,” said Hudson.
Hudson gives a great amount of credit to TEC-SMART for providing a foundation to be a college student and Senate Secretary. Although Hudson has many goals for Hudson Valley and the Senate, he has a very simple legacy in mind
“I want to leave a lasting impression of what it means to be a part of something bigger than yourself,” said Hudson.
“We can’t change everything in one year. It’s a continuous and transparent operation so that the people that come behind us can easily take over and make changes necessary for the future,” he said.
While the intricacies and procedures of a Student Senate body are endless, Hudson follows his own guiding principle for making decisions that have a wide-reaching and multi-generational effect on the College.
“I can’t change yesterday, I can only hope for a better tomorrow… I use what I learned yesterday, apply it to today and make a better tomorrow for the next person,” he said.
Now, the senate is working on a revision of the by-laws, a document that has not been updated since 2011. The revision could include no changes at all, minor changes like word changes or even warrant a full reconstruction of the by-laws. As part of the committee, Hudson recognizes that every action he takes must be in the best interest of the incoming class.
“When I stop and look at [a decision that must be made], I have to say, ‘okay, I won’t be here next year, and I need to have the attitude of what next year’s representatives can work with,’” said Hudson, who certainly works with the future in mind.
“Every decision I make this year needs to benefit those I may not know [and] those I may never meet. They may never know my name, but something they get engaged with or involved in [might come] from something I did this year,” said Hudson.
The foundation of Hudson’s model of leadership is attributed to his time at TEC-SMART. For one of his projects there, he presented a business model for a fingerprint scanner and Interpol monitoring system to track terror cell movement around the world at the Center for Economic Growth Start Up Challenge.
“Even though it was a hypothetical company, I reached out to people in Europe and around the world with the initiative of making a better tomorrow,” said Hudson.
Hudson elaborated on the product, explaining that in the milliseconds it takes to unlock your smartphone with your fingerprint, the system could track terrorist movement across the border.
He also noted the system’s practicality in the European Union, which has open borders, and stated he believed it could have prevented the Paris terror attack mastermind striking again in Brussels after counter-terror agencies were unable to track the suspect’s movements in time.
“What if we could have done it 48 hours faster? What if in six minutes [the system] could tell everybody in the world this man had moved from France into Belgium?” asked Hudson.
Hudson related this experience to his leadership style and his ultimate goal of contributing to a better tomorrow by learning from yesterday and applying it to today.
The Student Senate Secretary applies this ideology to his work in the senate in the hopes of creating a lasting impact on the community.