“I think it’s everything,” said Christine Kemper. “There are lots of people making a lot of money in the community, and that is their reward for business success, but what everybody is talking about are the next great leaders.” She noted the example of the late Adele Hall. “She gave money, but also her time, stuffing envelopes, serving on boards at the highest levels—she never stopped, and I feel like that’s been a huge difference-maker for our community.” If you take that part away, Kemper said, 40 Under Forty becomes nothing more than a competition over who’s the best lawyer or engineer, or who’s made the most money. “What makes you different,” she said, “is how you give.”
To that end, Joe Sweeney posed the question of whether future classes of 40 Under Forty might be tasked with group efforts to address community challenges. As participants noted, decades-long problems facing the region are unlikely to be addressed with a handful of meetings from any small, independent group, no matter how influential they are. But success can be achieved at the margins, such as with concerted efforts to mentor start-up businesses or high-school students, doing more to promote business involvement with non-profit causes, or taking on administration of one-and-done events like Ingram’s CEOpen Executive Golf Tournament. A project overseen by 40 Under Forty alumni, the golf tournament has raised $550,000 in eight years, benefitting 33 non-profits throughout the region.
“There are a lot of smart people in this room,” said Tom Proebstle. “Let’s get together and talk about things. If we make an event compelling enough, we could bring in big-name people and get some sort of funding for an event,” something likely to draw sponsorship support from companies represented by those in the roundtable.
As Kevin Kramer noted, “We’ve all been on groups and committees, but success has always been about the execution: Who’s going to take that idea to the next step? How’s it going to be executed? If we lay that out, we can recruit great support from 600 people.”