YOUNG PROFESSIONALS PROGRAM UPDATES

The Young Professionals Program is looking forward to another great and interesting year! We are pleased to welcome five new young professionals to the program. Leilani Ching, Shabnam Ferdowsi, Kyleen Sanchez, Antoine Abou Moussa, and Clare Jones will be joining our stellar group of Young Professional led by Committee Leaders: Kristine Ellsworth, Leslie Rodgers, Patrick Evans, Gowri Somasundaram, Shelby Hoglund, Felipe Pedrazzi, and Natasha Dyer, with returning committee members Isaac Bearg and Coryanne Mansell.

For those who are not familiar with the program, the Young Professionals Group is a group of young (under 40) professionals in the compost industry who partner with the USCC. They run several programs for the USCC that would not be possible without their help. Each year they help the USCC with marketing and outreach throughout the year as well as at the conference, run the mentoring program, arrange an annual volunteering project, facilitate quarterly webinars, and design and execute the Emerging Composter competition at the annual conference.

Several of the yearly YP projects will take a new virtual aspect as we all navigate the new “normal”. They have begun planning changes to make to the Emerging Composter competition at the annual Compost Conference; keep your ears out for what that opportunity will look like this year! They have also begun discussions around the yearly YP Volunteering project at the annual conference and how to get folks engaged from home. We are excited to see what they come up with and how we can all connect, even from afar.

Finally, the YP Mentoring Program is well underway! The pairs are about one third of the way through the program as the program runs from May through January. This year has been the biggest cohort of mentor and mentee pairs in the program’s history! We want to give a big shout-out to all our fantastic members who have joined this program as mentors – sharing their knowledge and furthering the compost industry.