A Concordia College Alabama assistant business professor has a motto he lives by and said he encourages others in Selma to embrace it as well.

“Bloom wherever you are planted,” Glenn King, Jr, said, explaining that he has made the most of whatever circumstances he was planted in throughout his life thus far. As a Selma native, King grasped a hold of opportunities wherever he could find them, while members of the community poured encouragement into his life so he could get to where he is now — the assistant professor of business administration and the business community liaison for Concordia.

“Bloom wherever you are planted,” King repeated. “It does not matter where you come from; it does not matter the environment that you are in — you make the best out of what you have, and you utilize every resource that you can. Allow that plant to grow and blossom.”

For King he blossomed in Selma, graduating from Selma High School, he started immediately pursuing a degree in business while working at Regions Bank and Butler Truax Jewelers. He worked in retail and in the banking world for eight years and said those places and experiences set him up for his position as a liaison that merges practicum and theory in the business school.

“I walked into my position as a professor with a lot of practicum experience, and that is something I can bring to the students,” King said, explaining how he works to make connections between local industries and Concordia’s business program so students can gain that practicum experience while at school. “You can go to college and get a lot of theory but not a lot of practicum. I am the mediator; I bridge the theory and the practicum together where the student can get a total, quality education and they can leave Concordia and go to any industry and hit the ground running when they graduate.”

King said his wish for Selma, in addition for its people to bloom where they are planted, is for Selma to use its own resources first, rather than looking in other directions for improvements.

“We not only need to seize and use our resources here like our history, but we need a better understanding of those resources so that we can awaken and use those,” King said. He learned about many of those resources and how to use them in the Leadership Selma-Dallas County program, a program which he is now a board member of.

King said his passion for Selma and his service in the community are all ways he is just giving back.

“Why not try and make a positive impact here on Selma — the place that first gave me a chance,” King said.