WHERE WE’RE GOING, WE DON’T NEED ROADS.

It’s an exciting time in the world of the Servus Young Leaders Network, and it doesn’t even involve plutonium or a flux capacitor.

Our new executive committee members Kirk Nielsen, Karina Farr, and Trish Rasmussen will begin their 3 year term with the Servus Young Leaders Network on November 1st. All three of these individuals will bring a new set of knowledge, experiences, and skills to help take the Servus Young Leaders Network to another level. For me, this is the expectation for every new set of executive committee members coming on board. We want them to make the Servus Young Leaders Network bigger and better year after year after year. While I don’t want to make this too heavy for incoming executive, the expectation is for them to contribute by either improving our current programming or bring something new to the network that will improve young leader development. Challenged laid; no pressure kids!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our three departing executive committee members. Stewart Oke and Tracy Millman have been with the Servus Young Leaders Network from its inception, while Steve Till-Rogers joined the group a few months shortly thereafter. They have all been key builders as we’ve brought the Servus Young Leaders Network from a vision into a living and breathing entity. I am forever grateful for everything each of you brought to the network. As each of you move into Servus Young Leaders Network alumni, I know you will continue to assist in encouraging others to join the network and be a part of something career altering. 

So, where do we go from here?

Firstly, continued expansion. At present, we have about 25% of the roughly 900 employees 35 and under a part of the Servus Young Leaders Network. We want to increase that. Luckily we are getting some support in this area. Earlier this year, I had a meeting with young leaders from the Lloydminster region about setting up a regional young leader group. From that, I have pretty much been hands off and only act in a mentorship capacity as a committee has been formed to champion the Lloydminster region. Lavender Miller, Amy Martell, Ashley Dyck, Amanda Frantik, and Krista Smith have done a fantastic job in spreading the young leader program, and they are also bringing valuable contributions to both the Lloydminster branch and the community. Over the past few months, they have hosted several lunch and learns and have had various guest speakers come in including, representatives from human resources and a member of the Canadian National Young Leaders Committee. They have also supported various charitable community events and have hosted young leader networking events. With the success of the Lloydminster region Young Leaders Network, we are also starting to see another form in the Edmonton region, and hope that the Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat regions will follow suit.

We’ve also made some adjustments to our National Scholarship program. The program allows for one young leader to represent Servus Credit Union at the national level in the Credit Union Central of Canada’s National Young Leader Award program. The winner of this program will not only be able to attend the National Conference located somewhere in Canada, but they will have the ability to be mentored directly from a member of the Servus Credit Union Executive Leadership team for a period of one year.

With the success of the 35 under 35 Leadership Retreat, this is a program that we will definitely be running again next year. We’ve had great feedback from our attendees and will look to form a sub-committee that will handle the planning and implementation of this program for 2012.

So to all Servus young leaders, come join the Servus Young Leaders Network, it is your density….I mean destiny.

Devin