For TROY alumna LeighAshton Nuss, the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Seminar at Troy University is a ‘coming home’ experience.

Nuss serves the organization as Alabama’s Leadership Seminar Chair, a volunteer position the fourth-grade teacher at New Market, AL Moore’s Mill Intermediate School sees as impactful on the state.

“HOBY is a worldwide leadership seminar for high school sophomores where they learn more about their personal leadership style and take that and learn to work in groups and in their communities back home and how to impact change around the world,” she said. “It’s a lot of teaching them how to think, not what to think.”

Nearly 250 rising high school juniors from 146 schools across Alabama are at TROY this weekend for the seminar, part of the international youth leadership program begun in 1958 by actor Hugh O’Brian, most famous for his ABC Television role of Wyatt Earp.

This weekend’s seminar hits the two-decade mark the seminar has been held at TROY, where more than 7,000 students have percolated through the program.

Nuss was one of those students her sophomore year in high school. 

“(HOBY) was the first time I came to TROY. The school offered a $1,000 scholarship for HOBY ambassadors and that led me to apply when it came time for college. They offered me some other really good scholarships and I came in 2013 and fell in love with,” she said. 

Her family joined her in TROY in 2015, when her father, Mobile native Todd Watson, joined the Troy Trojans football staff as Director of Operations and High School Relations from 2015-2017 before moving on to the University of Tennessee’s football program.

“They got to share TROY with me,” she said.

 When it came time for her sister to attend HOBY, Nuss said, even though she was in school in Tennessee, she recruited her to come to Alabama’s program.

“It’s special here. It’s a special place for me – both the school and the program, and I wanted her to have that experience,” she said.

It’s the experience at Alabama’s program at TROY that impacted now Director of Alumni Relations Charles Gordon.

“(HOBY) changed my life in so many ways,” he said. “I wasn’t supposed to come to HOBY. I was the alternate from my school, but I’m a firm believer it was the Lord that (knew) I needed to be here. I got here and it changed my life. It showed me I had so much potential for growth and had so many opportunities to see change in my world.”

Now the coordinator for service programming at Auburn University, Gordon is in his ninth year on the HOBY team – he’s come up through the program from ambassador to high-school alumni staff to group facilitator to his current role.

“My job is to continue the HOBY story once you leave the seminar and finding ways to promote servant leadership and service change in their own communities,” Gordon said. “I spearhead the Leadership for Service (L4S) Challenge where we challenge our ambassadors to complete 100 hours of community service in their own communities. We strive to allow them to find a social change issue or a special topic that interests them.”

“Ultimately, we are showing them that servant leadership and change comes from passion,” he said.

Troy University continues to offer a $1,000 scholarship for any HOBY ambassador who chooses TROY as his or her college of choice, in addition to any other scholarship offers for which they qualify.

Schools sending ambassadors this year include: