Grand Island Area Chamber of Commerce Thursday honored the community’s Top 35 Under 35 professionals.
The annual event recognizes extraordinary leadership and dedication to the community, said GIACC President Cindy Johnson.
“These leaders have accomplished so much in their professional lives, their personal lives and in their contributions to this community,” Johnson said, “whether they are involved or engaged in a Boy Scout organization or church, nonprofit organizations.”
She added, “It’s trite to say, ‘Our future is in their hands,’ but our future is in their hands, and I think we’re in very good shape.”
The 35 honorees gathered at Grand Island’s Riverside Golf Club.
Lt. Gov. Mike Foley spoke on the importance of Nebraska’s young professionals, calling them “the future of our state.”
“These talented young people, ages 21 through 35, have in common that they’re goal-driven, which is what we need to be,” he said. “When they succeed as they are now doing, they help to cut a path and build a future for all of us. It’s more than fitting we take pause to give them the appropriate recognition.”
Foley applauded the honorees for their achievements.
“To our young awardees I say congratulations for choosing not to do what’s easy, but to do what’s hard, and to accept the challenges of our time and not to postpone them, but taking them on directly,” he said.
He added, “Our state is going to be a much better place for what you’re doing.”
Among the honorees, Dr. Cassondra Lux-O’Callaghan had moved back to Grand Island less than a year ago and so was surprised to be honored by the community in such a short period of time.
“I am very honored to be in the Top 35,” she said. “I believe part of that is just my commitment to the community, being out there and attending the chamber’s events and just saying ‘Hi’ to everybody.”
Bryce Collamore was one of two Grand Island Police Department investigators honored, along with Ryan Sullivan.
“It’s an honor, especially seeing all the other individuals who are receiving the award, as well,” Collamore said. “I know a handful of them and know how great they are within the community, so to be included with them is definitely an honor.”
Being included among the honorees is “an extremely humbling honor,” said Megan Arrington-Williams, marketing and development coordinator for the Stuhr Museum Foundation.
“The company in this group are some phenomenal folks in the Grand Island area,” she said. “It’s just an honor to be nominated and even more of an honor to be selected.”
The event’s keynote speaker, Beth Frerichs of Chief Industries Inc., is a former honoree.
Frerichs compared the efforts of the event’s honorees to those of the animal that has captured the imagination of her curious five-year-old son, the shark.
A shark never stops swimming and if they move backward, they die.
“I now realize why sharks look so angry. Because they’re exhausted,” she said. “It got me to thinking, ‘Why am I so exhausted all the time?’ It’s because of what we put on ourselves. We want to make sure we’re doing the things, and for us with kids, we want to make sure they’re doing the things.”
Frerichs told how, as a young professional, she made a habit of involving herself in chamber events, especially Business After Hours, and joining Leadership Tomorrow.
“After being here in Grand Island for maybe three years I knew countless Grand Islanders, and I felt more a part of this community than I have felt in any community since I left my hometown over 20 years ago,” she said. “I didn’t shoot for the moon, at first. I didn’t go to all the functions of the groups I was in. But I made a point to show up.”
She added, “I had a plan, I had a structure and I had a goal. I just had to show up.”
The end result, Frerichs said, is that she did not choose Grand Island, it was Grand Island that chose her.
“Never stop moving. Never stop showing up. And definitely don’t swim backward,” she said. “Be your own shark.”
