Joe Murray

Joe Murray is a senior at Virginia Military Institute, the oldest state-supported military college in the US. He’s due to graduate soon with honours in English and a concentration in philosophy from this university, ranked among the nation’s top undergraduate public liberal arts colleges since 2001.

As regimental executive officer, second in command of the corps, his role is to oversee, plan and supervise all training that happens within VMI. After graduating, he will join the United States Marine Corps.

It was not the trajectory he had thought possible before Hargrave. “I think when I came to Hargrave, I realised for the first time the value of leadership and that was something that I wanted to aspire to in my life,” he explains. “Before that, I really never had any experience with thinking about how important it is to be cultivating leadership traits.”

He credits Sergeant Major Harold Hofer for instilling in him “a desire to become a leader, to give back to the community around me."