Young Professionals of Odessa is launching its inaugural Permian Basin Leadership Symposium Aug. 25 at the Odessa Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.
Co-chair Kevin Dawson said it is a program of Young Professionals of Odessa. Plans are to start at 8 or 8:30 a.m. and it will run until 5 p.m. The objective is to have 200 attendees and they expect people from Lubbock, Abilene and San Angelo.
“We have two keynote speakers. We’ll have a morning keynote by leadership author Bruce Waller, author of the book Life in the Leadership Lane and then our lunch keynote is Gloria Salinas, who is the VP of economic development for Frisco EDC, formerly (head of) Downtown Odessa,” Dawson said.
“We invited her one because she’s from the area. As a young professional (she) was very instrumental in helping Frisco land some of their big, exciting new projects like the new amusement park that they’re getting,” Dawson said.
There will be breakout sessions in the morning and afternoon.
“Currently, there is a call for speakers for those breakout sessions focusing on leadership development, community involvement, mental health, diversity … entrepreneurship and quality of place,” Dawson said. “We’ll have a selection of speakers, potentially even panels, for that, and then a networking mixer to end the day. The target audience is going to be the young professional demographic, but it is open to the public to attend.”
“Our goal with doing this symposium, which will be an annual program, is to really inspire the young professional community in the Permian Basin to level up in terms of how do we lead and get involved in our community. Our theme for our first year is fuel your focus. Our hope is that attendees will be inspired to focus on their personal and professional development, their ability to get involved in the community, to say hey, you know, we can be current leaders or future leaders to improve where we are and be the change that we hope to see,” Dawson said.
It’s important to have this symposium to invest in themselves personally and invest in others professionally.
“It’s always important to continue to evolve and to learn. For our organization and our goals, it really boils down to in order for us to continue to move forward we’ve got to continue to learn from others how to move forward,” Dawson said.
He said that means everybody young and old.
“My own personal thought process is you’re never too young and you’re never too old to continue to work,” Dawson said.
He tells people the story of how he took his grandmother to college to learn social media.
“She’s in her 90s now and constantly wanting to stay engaged in life. There’s never a time where you (should) stop learning,” Dawson said.
A good friend of his told him that you need three people on your personal board — someone you’re being mentored by, somebody who is a peer that you can share experiences with and somebody that you’re mentoring.
“It doesn’t matter what ages people are (or) where they’re at in their career, there’s always an opportunity to learn from someone, to share with somebody and to teach somebody,” Dawson added.
Young Professionals of Abilene has been having a similar event for the last several years and several YPO board members have gone to Abilene to observe. The last time, they were involved in some of the committees and even asked to be part of some of the breakout panels.
“We’ve learned a little bit from them on some of their best practices, and what has helped them be successful. We wanted to do the same as an organization to say okay, you know, we just celebrated 10 years of young professionals last year and so as we kind of move into our new decade, it was time to start leveling up ourselves and saying, Okay, we’ve invested in ourselves, how do we invest back into the community some more by preparing and equipping young professionals to be leaders,” Dawson said.
Odessa YPO has more than 160 members.
“We are going to be changing some things up in order to take us to the next level that hopefully will grow us the same way Abilene has. Abilene has 600 members largely driven by corporate memberships,” Dawson said.
He added that they want to engage corporate partners to help them attract and retain young professionals who may view being in West Texas as a tour of duty and how to figure out how to get them to stay engaged.
“The best way to stay engaged is to build community, to build networks and why not connect them with other young professionals who share some of the same goals and values and say this is how we’re going to go through this process,” Dawson said.
He added that he spends most of his time working with employers on attracting and retaining talent.
“It’s always a struggle of how do we get people to stay here, especially when we’re trying to bring them here, or they’re not from here,” Dawson said.
He knows people wish there were more things to do here, however, the area is growing and new things are coming in.
“But at the end of the day, when I talk to people who leave, their biggest thing that they miss is the people, so we’re trying to build community … because that’s ultimately what gets people to go ‘I don’t want to leave because I have such a strong community’,” Dawson said.
“Ultimately, I think for Odessa and West Texas as a whole to move forward it does need to leverage a little bit of that young professional community,” he added.
Dawson said Odessa and Midland now have a lot of young professionals. According to the Census Bureau, the average age is 30.4 years old.
“We as young professionals see the direction that we want to move and so we’re getting more involved in the community development process, whether that is getting involved in nonprofits or running for office. Ector County Judge Dustin Fawcett is a member of young professionals,” Dawson said.
YPO sees the success members have had and they want to start leveraging their collective voices to move things forward.
Right now, there is an early-bird discount for YPO members and non-members until July 3.
Those interested in presenting during the breakout sessions can go to any of YPO’s social media platforms, visit the website or email at [email protected].
