Ariel Shead, a senior with a dual major in business management and accounting received the President’s Second Mile Award on Saturday at the 185th commencement ceremony for Savannah State University (SSU) on December 13, 2014.  The award recognizes stellar leadership on campus, in the Savannah community and beyond.

Shead, a graduate of Albany High School in Albany, Ga., has been involved in a variety of scholastic and service activities on the campus of SSU, including: the Golden Key International Honor Society, where she served as president; the Delta Sigma Pi Professional Business Fraternity, where she served as vice president of finance, and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority where she served as vice president and chair of programs. 

Since 2010, she has worked as a student assistant in the office of the vice president of academic affairs. During her time here, she has also volunteered with The Salvation Army, the Inner City night Shelter, Senior Citizens, Inc., and the Old Savannah City Mission.

Shead has completed internships with Merrill Lynch as a global wealth market advisor and with Zerochoas as a human resources business student intern. In 2012, Shead engaged in a study abroad program in India where she made transformational steps to change the lives of those in small villages. In 2013, she won the Best Papers Award from the Academy of International Business – Southeast (AIB-SE) for a project entitled “Fraudulent Accounting.” The research paper was published in the International Marketing and Management Research Journal from Palgrave Macmillan publishers.

Shead plans to earn an MBA and Ph.D. in the future, with an eye toward working in the corporate world before becoming a professor.