“Energize YPN is an opportunity for young professionals to meet one another, connect and create a network that will help advance their careers. I’ve been involved since my junior year of college. I was interested in the community and I knew about things going on, and ultimately knew that there was a life after college I needed to work on. I wanted to meet like-minded people who were also just getting started in their careers and have a group of people that I could attend events with.
When you join Energize, for the first year of your membership, you get paired up with a Steering Committee member and they serve as your mentor for a year. They have two roles in that, one is to serve as a friend to take you to events in the community like Chamber events, community-wide volunteer events, and Energize events. They also let you know about upcoming events that you might want to attend based on your career and your networking interests to help you get exposed to different groups.
The second thing they help you with is working on your professional and leadership goals. In the beginning, you do a meet and greet where they learn about who you are: your interests, your goals, your professional skills, and more. At the end of your mentorship program time, they meet with you again to do an overview about your experience and also talk about and reflect on where you were then versus where you are now.
Aside from our coffee socials, we also have something called Energize After 5 events that operate just like our coffee socials as another opportunity for young professionals to hang out and spend some time networking. Those came about because we had people say that they would love to attend coffee socials, but they can't necessarily take that time off of work in the beginning of their work day. We're doing them quarterly to start to get a feel for them and how people like them.
We are going to start planning for our 15-year event next month for young professionals to join us at a more formal cocktail setting to hang out, network and celebrate where Energize has been for the last 15 years.
What's really cool about it is that we're hoping to bring back the original people who started Energize to come and reflect about their experience and where Energize has brought them in their careers. The event will give young professionals the opportunity to ask questions about what it's like to have a flourishing career, how to get to where those people are at, and what are some tips and tricks they used in their careers. We're just going to make it a big celebration for all of our young professionals.”
– Nicole Horn, Bay Area Energize
“At the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, one of our biggest initiatives is attracting and retaining talent, so it’s important for people to create their own connections and relationships, both personal or professional. The vision of Bay Area Energize is to enhance the Great Lakes Bay Region by cultivating those relationships for young professionals. Important to the growth in Bay County is giving young people a reason to stay here and that starts with building connections.
Personally, through Energize YPN I've made a lot of professional relationships. I’ve also make actual friends! That’s nice because I'm not from the area, so when I moved here, I was starting from square one and it’s great to have your own community, and people that you can relate to and share with.
Much like the Chamber, for many of the Energize events, we offer member rates and future member rates. A lot of people will come to a coffee event to just feel things out, to see what it's like, and maybe meet some people before they decide they want to join. Starting this year, we are launching a membership campaign, and the idea is to pair up new Energize members with current Steering Committee members that have been with Energize for a while and know how it works. We think providing a little more structure and giving people opportunities to be partnered up with someone who has existing connections already helps them ease into it, so they can become more involved.
To apply for Energize, we have a link on the Chamber website and that takes you to our application. Basically, it asks what business you're with and some contact information. We also ask what your hobbies and interests are. We can look at that information when we're thinking about programming to see what our members are interested in. Energize membership is free for Chamber members and it's $30 a year for non-members. But either way, these events are pretty accessible to just about anyone. It's just a different rate for members versus non-members, but it's very easy to join.”
– Annabelle Schweiger, Marketing & Membership Manager, Bay Area Chamber of Commerce
“I'm in the sales and marketing department as a customer service representative with Michigan Sugar Company and I joined Bay Area Energize in March of last year. It was something that my boss brought to my attention. He's involved with Rotary and in the Chamber, and he asked me, ‘Is this something you'd be interested in?’ I said, ‘Absolutely!’ The Lunch and Learn event for the Social Media Bootcamp was the first thing I attended and it's only been up from there. I love being involved and creating that sense of belonging within the community.
Our 15-year event is going to be huge because 15 years only comes around once! I'm looking forward to that and I also love the annual golf outing every August. That is August 9th this year and it's a fun, laid back, outdoors event.
Energize has impacted my life just by the connections that I’ve made. It’s nice seeing friendly faces around town or being invited to the fun events because making friends as an adult is hard. YPN is a great door to introduce you to like-minded people and to make friends. What you do with those connections are up to you, but it's the step in the right direction.”
– Morgan Candela, customer service representative with Michigan Sugar
