Four years ago, a group of diverse young professionals decided that they wanted to stay in St. Louis but were not as connected to the region as they aspired to be.
Coming out of the mentor network of the Regional Business Council (RBC), the group approached RBC Executive Director Kathleen Osborn and told her they wanted to develop more business and social connections.
“You can have a great job but if you’re getting to a certain age and you can’t find your lifestyle here, you will go somewhere else and we’ll never really know why you left,” Osborn said.
The Young Professionals Network (YPN) was born, and it’s now 1,800 members strong. Of these members, 63 percent are African-American, and the remainder is mix of many ethnicities, including Hispanic, Pakistani and Asian.
Then two years ago, the council took 100 professionals from the YPN and invited them to become part of the Leadership 100.
“We could provide networking opportunities and specialized programs with YPN,” Osborn said, “but in terms of really providing an intensive leadership experience, we needed to have a smaller number.”
The 100 young professionals in Leadership 100 are primarily people under 40 who are working in corporations and nonprofit organizations in St. Louis. Part of the Leadership 100’s mission is to groom more diverse civic leaders.
“I serve on a number of boards in town and invariably the discussion gets around, ‘Geez we need some more diversity on this board,’” Osborn said.
She said prominent African American such as consultant Merisant founder Arnold Donald and St. Louis American publisher Donald M. Suggs are frequently mentioned. “Of course, they are over-boarded,” Osborn said. “We are talking about the next generation of leadership.”
The council has been matching members of Leadership 100 with organizations that are either interested in having more young people or more diverse people on their boards.
“For the young professionals, it’s a way to get some experience and to feel like they are really contributing,” she said.
The RBC also is helping to groom diversity in area business organizations. Three years ago, the RBC helped to establish the Asian Chamber of Commerce, and it has made a $20,000 commitment each year for two years. It has also been investing about $20,000 a year for the last two years in the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. This is another way to find and retain diverse talented people in St. Louis, she said.
“When you invest in Hispanic businesses, then you find out – where are the children of these business owners going?” she said. “Well, they’re graduating, and they want to come back to work here. So we want to make sure coming back here means they feel like they have opportunity and have access to the kind of networks that we all need.”
In September, the council will host its annual YPN reception, its biggest networking event at the St. Louis Art Museum’s new addition. Aside from networking, the group also engages in various community projects by partnering with the regional United Way and Urban League.
Although a membership of 1,800 people for YPN is a good start, Osborn said it’s just scratching the surface.
“There are a lot more people out there,” she said. “We want to use our platform to say to St. Louis, ‘We’ve got to look at global diversity. We’ve got to look at it at every level. And we’ve got to open our networks.’”
Opening networks means opening up board positions for more diverse professionals, she said. It means helping these professionals make connections because these professionals want to build a career and life here, she said.
She said, “In part, the future of St. Louis is contingent upon this group of people staying here and doing well and investing in St. Louis.”
For more information on YPN, visit http://www.stlrbc.org.
