For the past four years, we at the League have continued to grow our young professional networking and development efforts. From the creation of our Young Professionals Council to the Crash events we’ve held at Convention and GAC, we’ve found more and more young credit union employees with a desire to be more engaged within the movement.
We launched the YP Network in 2011, which has helped us to keep track and stay in touch with young professionals. But in realizing that we need to do more, we’ve introduced a new leadership model and website that aims to give much of the control and direction of the Network to YPs themselves.
Therefore, the YP Council has been discontinued in favor of a new, five person Network Advisory Council. The roles and responsibilities of the Board can be viewed here. They will not only work with The League’s YP Liaison, but also the Chapter YP Liaisons – while these roles aren’t new, they’ve been traditionally more a part of the chapters than our YP group. So we’re changing that.
Through the Advisory Board and YP Chapter Liaisons, we hope to:
- Extend our reach across the state and better connect with YPs
- Create a formalized structure for the Network and fine tune our communications model
- Provide more leadership opportunities for YPs
And regarding that last bullet: while it may look like we’re cutting back leadership positions, the Network will remain flexible and we’ll have the option of creating separate leadership committees for specific events (like when we brought in mentors for the Crash event at our League’s Annual Convention).
We have some amazing young professionals in our ranks and it’s time we build something that truly allows them to develop into leaders and play an integral part in ensuring credit unions continue to prosper and reach younger members.
Onward and upward.
- Chad
