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Youth advisory boards a unique way to engage future leaders (Business Record)

The idea of business engaging youths is far from new in Des Moines. Many businesses - Principal Financial Group Inc. for example - participate in United Way of Central Iowa's Emerging Leaders Initiative, and the Iowa Association of Business and Industry Foundation (ABIF) has a variety of efforts aimed at developing the state's future leaders.

Between ABIF's Leadership Iowa program and Young Professionals of Iowa for young working adults, Leadership Iowa University for college students and Business Horizons for high school students, the organization is devoted to helping young leaders grow in the state.

Tom McMahon, chairman of Leadership Iowa University and vice president of operations at Barker Co. Ltd., thinks it's important that businesses and organizations such as Bankers Trust and the Community Foundation are finding unique ways to reach out to youth.

"When they are committing to helping the next generation grow into the right responsibilities and grow into the jobs and the culture that we have," McMahon said, "it just tells me that we are going to continue to succeed as a state, that Iowa is going to continue to be the place where we want to raise our children and actually have a business that can be very prosperous."

McMahon said that beyond the importance of businesses learning about their future customers, the initiatives can also help efforts keep young people in the state after they graduate from college.

"It is imperative that we engage these students and really expose them to what is available in Iowa," he said. "If we don't, we are going to continue to get the same result we have always had, and that's a predominant number of these students leaving the state."

McMahon recommends that most businesses, unless they have resources like a Bankers Trust, should try to get involved in existing programs that connect business with youths.
 

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