When Susan Heinrich started her new job as a mortgage loan officer at Associated Bank in Green Bay, she knew there was one skill she needed to bone up on: networking.
“I can talk to anybody, but I don’t have great networking skills,” she says. “I’m not afraid to talk at all, but it’s literally, meeting someone, and that whole networking aspect, I allow that to be a block. I really wanted to just step right in and be like, ‘Okay, here we go. Go big or go home.’”
Heinrich found a place to “go big” at last year’s Green Bay Community Leadership Institute, a daylong community workshop put on by local nonprofit organization NeighborWorks that includes sessions on building skills like networking.
About 80 people attended last year’s GBCLI, which helped people learn how to network, how to work with their neighborhood associations and other organizations, and how to use their talents to improve the community.
“I just love that it’s about bringing everyone together,” Heinrich said. “I didn’t even realize that there were so many avenues to be able to be involved. It was a really good awareness, to be able to see how we can impact our community right here, starting on just that Saturday. I also appreciated that they had pieces to help you implement out in your community, so I could start within my home, within my street, within the city.”
That very thing — helping people learn just how many ways that they can get involved in their community — is one of the driving forces behind the founding of the GBCLI three years ago.
“We kind of felt like far too often people don’t see themselves as leaders outside of the business realm, the professional work realm,” says Rashad Cobb, a board member at NeighborWorks and Community Engagement Program Officer at Greater Green Bay Community Foundation. “We’re really trying to provide this opportunity for community members to come in and engage in these workshops that we offer to help build up their personal tool chest so they can go out and be leaders in the community, whether it be in their local neighborhood association, in their home, perhaps even back at the workforce. And so we’re just trying to make this a very easily accessible thing for people. Something that’s not too stuffy.”
Heinrich was so impressed with last year’s Institute that she’s on the planning team for this year’s event, which will take place on March 3 at Washington Middle School. It will include sessions on a variety of topics, including volunteer recruitment, the local food movement, secrets to recruiting and retaining volunteers, civic engagement, and personal and community asset mapping.
The location is no accident, either. Earlier this month, Green Bay School District replaced the principal and hired a consultant to address rampant behavior issues and poor student achievement at the school on the city’s east side, which also has the highest proportion of African American students of the city’s four middle schools.
“We are really intentional about reaching out to the local school district and asking if we could bring this event to that middle school so that it could have the community see this school potentially in another light,” Cobb says. “To see something positive happening in this building. But just having it at Washington kind of seems pretty (superficial), so we’ve worked with leadership within the school and they’re actually going to be providing a session, leading a session, on the school and some of the amazing things happening in the school.”
The Green Bay Community Leadership Institute runs from 8:30 am until 3:30 pm on Saturday, March 3 at Washington Middle School, 314 S Baird Street in Green Bay. Registration is $20 and includes a light breakfast, coffee and full lunch. Registration is available at nwgreenbay.org.
