Nathan Smith was eight years old the first time he spoke in front of a crowd.
His third-grade teacher had noticed he was always the first to raise his hand to read aloud in class, and recommended him to lead readings at his Grade School Catholic Mass. The parish needed students for the first reading, second reading, and petitions. Smith said yes — and that Friday, he stood before more than three hundred people.
“Needless to say, I was nervous,” Smith recalled. “But with some encouragement from my dad, I said yes, and that next Friday I got up and read in front of over 300 people. Since then, I have not only loved public speaking, but also tried to encourage myself to do the uncomfortable because I know eventually it can grow into something you love.”
More than a decade later, Smith is Student Body President at Kent State University — a 3rd year Business Management and Finance double major from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and IFC Representative for his Sigma Chi chapter. The throughline from that church lectern to the student body presidency is not coincidental. It is a discipline he has practiced deliberately, one uncomfortable moment at a time.
Go Where the Audience Already Is
Smith’s campaign for Student Body President carried the same strategic logic that has defined his leadership approach broadly: do not wait for people to come to you. Go find them where they are already engaged.
“Target student organizations,” he said. “At student organization meetings, their members are already engaged, so that is the best time to talk to them. It is more effective to talk to a group of students all at once rather than tabling in the student center and getting a couple at a time.”
The fraternity and sorority community was central to that strategy. His Sigma Chi chapter placed campaign yard signs at the chapter house. The IFC and Panhellenic Instagram pages amplified his candidacy. Chapters across campus opened their executive board and chapter meetings to give him the floor. It was a coalition built on relationships cultivated long before any campaign began — which is, of course, the point.
“Members of a student organization will have similar points of view on various issues around campus,” Smith noted, “so it is important to meet with multiple groups — from fraternity and sorority to major-related to culture-based.”
From the Outside Looking In
Smith had friends in the fraternity and sorority community before joining Sigma Chi. Membership, he said, changed something fundamental about how he understood those relationships.
“Being part of Sigma Chi helped me to understand their points of view on things rather than simply looking from the outside,” he said. “The fraternity and sorority community is so encouraging of you growing into the person you want to become and looks for ways to help you in any way they can.”
That shift — from observer to participant, from peripheral supporter to invested member — is one of the quieter transformations fraternity membership produces. It builds the capacity to understand a community from the inside, which is precisely the capacity a student body president needs.
Acknowledge the Bias
One of Smith’s most candid pieces of advice for student government success cuts against the instinct to project neutrality. Do not pretend you have no biases, he says. That is dishonest — and ultimately ineffective.
“Acknowledge that you have biases towards one way or another, look for ways to understand and talk to people with differing views, and fully think through how your decisions could affect all people,” he said. It is a framework rooted in intellectual honesty: a leader who cannot name their own assumptions cannot fairly weigh them against the needs of a diverse constituency.
Speak the Dream Out Loud
For students who aspire to student government leadership, Smith offers advice that is part strategy, part neuroscience, and part accountability structure.
“Don’t just dream big — speak your dreams into reality,” he said. “Tell your friends, family, professors, and University staff. They might know someone who can help you achieve your goals, or they might be that person themselves. The most important thing about saying these goals out loud is that you start to program your brain to focus on that, and you build self-accountability by determining if the way you live currently will help you achieve greatness or hold you back.”
Beyond Student Body President, Smith’s goals span several worlds. He is pursuing a path into banking and finance, while his Business Management major feeds an entrepreneurial instinct already in practice — he currently runs his own DJ business. And increasingly, he says, a future in politics feels less like a possibility and more like an inevitability.
“Throughout my time in Student Government, it has become more and more apparent that I will be involved in politics,” he said. “I am not sure exactly where my path will take me, but I know that no matter what, I will rise to be the best I can be.”
That drive has a personal mantra behind it — one his father instilled in him early: always do your best in everything you do, and never stop striving.
He has been running that way ever since he was eight years old, standing at a lectern, voice steady, learning what it felt like to say yes to something uncomfortable — and discovering that the discomfort, given enough time, becomes something you love.
