Who are our young professionals?

The Regional Business Council (RBC) is a consortium of CEOs of large businesses in the St. Louis region who collaborate around high-impact business, civic and philanthropic initiatives for the betterment of the region. Since our inception in 2000, the RBC has been committed to increasing the diversity of our regional talent pool and ensuring the business community is an inclusive place. 

To that end, the RBC is focused on recruiting and developing globally diverse talent within the St. Louis marketplace and we partner with a variety of local organizations to achieve this goal including InSight St. Louis, Minority Supplier Diversity Council, The St. Louis American, Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Asian American Chamber of Commerce, the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative and Civic Progress. 

We established the Young Professionals Network (YPN) in 2008 to attract, retain, develop, and engage young, ethnically diverse professionals in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The YPN helps young professionals develop leadership abilities, build social and business networks, and give back to the community.

We at the Regional Business Council recently surveyed our 1,200 Young Professionals Network members to better understand who our members are and how they perceive the St. Louis region. We know how talented and driven our members are, so there weren’t many surprises in the survey data for us. Even so, we suspect that many people in the St. Louis area don’t know how amazing our pool of talent is and we feel that it is our duty to get the word out about them. This is the reason we produced the survey and publish the results.

Here are a few highlights of the survey results that we feel tell the story of our YPN members.

Education

YPN members are incredibly well educated. An overwhelming majority (94%) has a bachelor’s degree or higher education. And 39 percent have gone on to pursue a graduate degree and 10 percent have completed post-graduate studies. We don’t know of many other professional networking groups that can boast these kinds of numbers.

St. Louis is home

A majority of our members (51%) reported that they plan to live in St. Louis for at least the next 5 years. They love the city and think it is a great place to live. Top reasons cited for wanting to stay in St. Louis included job opportunities, leadership opportunities within their companies, affordability, and the family-friendly community.

YPN membership

So why do so many well-educated professionals who are passionate about St. Louis join the RBC’s YPN? The number one reason cited in the survey was the opportunity to meet other young professionals. Our members genuinely want to meet new people and foster deep relationships. They want to make new business connections and also see the YPN as an opportunity to meet company executives and community leaders.

We are really proud of our members and are always looking for quality young professionals to join our ranks. Do you believe that you would be a good fit? You can sign up for membership on our website at www.stlrbc.org. While you’re there, view the full survey report to learn more about the amazing young professionals who make up our network.

Kathy Osborn is Executive Director of the Regional Business Council.