Young Leaders Abound from the City’s Top Office Down
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In Muskogee, youth is hardly wasted on the young. While many cities try in vain to engage their young professionals in civic matters, this is a place where you’ll find them literally from the top, down.
The mayor is only 20 years old, and organizations such as MYPros and Leadership Muskogee keep the young professionals in and around town front and center in community affairs.
As the face of Muskogee, Mayor John Tyler Hammons certainly shows the city’s younger side. After taking office in May 2008, the college sophomore says his governing style is about openness and honesty, but also about the optimism that he and other young people can bring to Muskogee.
“We’ve got to get people involved at a young age, because we’ll be leading the world one day,” Hammons says. “In Muskogee we have a highly skilled, highly motivated and driven younger generation, and they truly want to be involved. Since my election I’ve spoken to several people under 25 who want to run for city council in the next election. They’re positioning themselves now, and that’s great for our community. It really shows what a vibrant spirit we have here.”
That enthusiasm is captured by the Muskogee Young Professionals, or MYPros, an offshoot of the Muskogee Chamber of Commerce devoted to providing networking opportunities and other business activities for the area’s up-and-coming business class. Everything from lunches with elected officials to a page on the MySpace social network is offered by MYPros, which is constantly looking to expand its membership and offerings, says Brianne Cormier, the organization’s current chair and a case worker in U.S. Rep. Dan Boren’s office.
“When we began two years ago we modeled ourselves on a smaller scale to what other towns have, and the main thing we all have in common is our desire to make Muskogee a better place,” Cormier says.
These days, MYPros is working on growing its membership and also on its various leadership-training activities. So far, the latter has included an informal series of lunches and other gatherings, and the goal now is to tap into as many community resources as possible.
“We are getting more of our people involved in committees around town, because eventually we’re going to be taking care of these things,” Cormier says. “It pays to get involved as early as possible, and be familiar with various activities in town, because the earlier we can help make a positive impact, the more we’ll be able to bring even more young people into town.”
Leaders from throughout the state will converge here as part of Leadership Oklahoma, which will make its first-ever stop in Muskogee in March 2009. The 22-year-old organization’s annual class has 10 meetings in 10 locations around the state, but had never made it to Muskogee, a situation that Rob Raasch, a Leadership Oklahoma graduate and the CEO of management and communications consulting firm Empower Change Inc., wanted to rectify.
“I graduated from [Leadership Oklahoma] last year, and was upset that we went to all these different communities but never came here,” Raasch says. “My wife is a graduate of Leadership Muskogee, and she suggested that we put together an application and bid for one of the weekends.”
With that bid accepted, Raasch says now’s the chance for Muskogee to strut its stuff on a statewide stage.
“Health care and transportation will be the issues focused on during the Muskogee weekend, and so we’ll be showcasing the [Jack C. Montgomery] VA Medical Center, the Three Rivers Health Center, our hospitals and clinics, and then our highways, the rail system and Davis Air Field. We’ve got a good story to tell on health care and transportation, and this is a great opportunity to do that in front of state officials.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Ian Curcio
