Tomorrow’s community leaders will emerge from today’s rising high school students, and one local student — Cullman High School’s Emma Hankey — might have already gotten a head start.

With a nomination from the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce, Hankey represented the area as one of 25 high school seniors statewide to attend the recent Huntingdon College Economic and Community Development Scholars Program in Montgomery. Now in its fifth year, the two-day session brought promising Alabama seniors together at the Huntingdon College campus, each student selected by their local chamber of commerce college’s Presidential Scholars Program.

Taking part in the program offered Hankey and other students a unique opportunity for some face time with a long list of Alabama leaders. During the course of the session, participants met and learned from a economic leaders including Huntingdon College president Dr. Anthony Leigh; Jim Searcy, Executive Director of the Economic Development Association of Alabama; Paige Hutto, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama; Nicholas Hadley, Business Development Specialist for the Alabama Department of Commerce; Madison Haddock, Economic Development Specialist Selma/Dallas County Economic Development Authority; Jess Skaggs, Chief of Staff for the Lieutenant Governor’s Office for the State of Alabama; and Bria Rochelle-Stephens, Director for the Huntingdon College Presidential Scholars Program.

Peer participation was also an emphasis for the program, which provided students the chance to take part in a hands-on mock project to gain practical insight into economic development in Alabama. Students were “divided into small groups and given a city in Alabama to represent as they vied for a corporation, led by President Anthony Leigh, to call their community ‘home,’” according to a college press release.

“The creativity and innovation put on display by these incredibly talented students brings me much excitement about the future of Alabama’s leadership,” Scholars Program director Rochelle-Stephens said in the release. “I am confident that each one of these students will leave a lasting impact in their communities.”