Help Me Ronda: Ronda Beaman Helps Other Achieve Dreams Through Leadership Class and Work with Terminally Ill Adults

Ronda Beaman speaks to her students on the final day of her leadership class.

On the final day of Ronda Beaman’s leadership class, she is surrounded by 30 students on O’Neill Green, many of them holding “vision boards” containing collages of their dreams.

One student says she wants to own a coffee shop. Another says he wants to be involved in sports management. A third shares that he wants to see the Seven Wonders of the World before he’s 30 – and expand his palate.

“I hate tomatoes,” he confesses.

Throughout the short presentations, Beaman offers a series of tips befitting a TED Talk veteran and executive coach, including:

Every day, every hour matters.

The world doesn’t care if you quit

Being happy takes work.

While many of the students have been high achievers in school, Beaman strives to prepare them for a more competitive world by teaching them to identify and sell their uniqueness.

“I think they need a bucket of cold water thrown on them,” she says later. “One of the questions I ask the first day is, ‘How many of you were valedictorians?’ Three-fourths of the class raise their hands.”

As she describes in her book “Little Miss Merit Badge,” Beaman’s own desire to achieve began as a Girl Scout, when she sought approval from her parents.

Ronda Beaman wearing her Girl Scout patches.

“Every time I earned a badge as a substitute for my father’s approval, I hand stitched it onto my sash,” she wrote. “They held neatly in place for over forty years.”

Her desire to achieve continued, leading her to earn a doctorate in leadership and policy studies from Arizona State University. For over three decades, she has worked with PEAK Learning, which provides professional training and coaching. While serving as chief creative officer there, she also founded Dream Makers SLO, a Make-a-Wish-type organization that helps adults with terminal illness, and she’s on the Board of Directors for the Pay it Forward Foundation, which promotes random acts of kindness.

At the College of Business, her leadership class is a student favorite, offering career readiness preparation and mentoring.

Before each year’s class begins, Beaman spends a week memorizing every student’s name and matching it to their ID photo.

“When you remember their name, you are saying — without saying — ‘You are significant to me,’” she said.

The once-a-week, pass/fail class, promoting qualities like resilience and compassion, includes numerous guest speakers, often former students who discuss obstacles they faced.

“I bring alumni to talk to people who sat in those seats not that long ago to really tell them the truth,” Beaman said.

She also gives students blank WIN (“What I Need”) books so students can take notes about the class and observations about themselves.

Ronda Beaman and her leadership class, after a group photo.

When he began his first job after graduation, Anshul Shah carried his WIN book daily in his 49ers backpack. If he faced a job challenge, he would open the book to see how the Anshul Shah from Beaman’s leadership class might address it.

“It just reinforces who I am as a person,” said Shah, a 2018 graduate. “I carry the things I learned in her class almost every day.”

Like many of her former students, Shah still speaks with Beaman regularly, sometimes just to catch up, other times for personal or career advice.

“With a therapist, you talk about the past. With Dr. B. you talk about the future,” Shah said. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone with more personality, charisma and empathy than Dr. B.”

While Learn by Doing is Cal Poly’s motto, Beaman’s students say they learn by example.

“She has such spunk and a zest for life,” said Carolyn Lidster, a 2022 graduate who took Beaman’s class as a freshman.

“This is the class that I’ll be looking back on post-grad,” said 2022 graduate Trevor Jackson.

Jackson was one of several students who arrived on the final day with vision boards.

If she had to create her own vision board today, Beaman said, it would be much different than the vision board of her youth.

“Senior in college – all about me,” she said. “Senior . . . not about me.”

Besides her class, a big focus now is on Dream Makers SLO, a community non-profit in San Luis Obispo County, where Beaman serves as executive director.

“So far we’ve made 43 dreams come true for people who have a year or less to live,” she said.

After he stepped out of a limo on Higuera Street, Tony Devodier said, “Can you believe this?” Dream Makers SLO, founded by Ronda Beaman, helped arrange his once-in-a-lifetime gig at SLO Brew.

Those dreams-come-true have varied. One woman met country music star Blake Shelton. Two friends with cancer were flown on a private plane to see a 49ers game. And in a well-publicized event, Tony Devodier, a homeless man with terminal cancer, was given VIP and paparazzi treatment as he played guitar to standing ovations during a live concert at a popular San Luis Obispo venue.

For Devodier, it was a night of fun and needed distractions.

“There’s no disease right then,” Beaman said. “There’s no death right then. It’s just a dream.”

The dreams usually mix smiles with tears.

“If you have to leave,” she continued, “to know that the world is a good place and there are good people who wanted to help you — that’s a little bit of solace.”

So, like her students on the final day of class, her vision board would include dreams.

Just not her own.

“It takes work to make your dreams come true – and luck,” she said. “So my vision now is to make other people have the same experience I’ve had when your dreams come true.”