Leanna DeVliegere on the National Young Leader Awards

Words from Leanne DeVliegere Associate Vice President, Member Solutions, Westoba Credit Union:

I had the outstanding opportunity to participate in the Credit Union Central of Canada National Young Leader Award competition in Banff this year! This has been one of my long-term goals realized, and the experience was more incredible than I could have imagined. It’s much bigger than the award itself…the learning process, connecting with others, discovering what you’re capable of…all of these are invaluable! The experience began long before heading to Banff…here are some highlights!

Westoba Credit Union nominated me for the national award after an internal competition among our young leaders

I wrote an essay as part of my submission package titled “Leadership is Influence”. For any young leaders who were at CUYLM’s Think Tank in 2014 we discussed creating a Circle of Influence and what that may look like. The concept is important to me, and I chose to write about the different pieces of my circle and how these help me to be an effective leader.

Once the five finalists were identified, we started meeting by conference call weekly to put a presentation together which we titled “What’s Your Story?”. We determined that each finalist would share a leadership experience and then as a group, put out a ‘call to action’ to our audience and encourage other young leaders to start thinking about their own stories, experiences, people to involve, etc.

In Banff, each finalist had the opportunity to meet with two CUCC Board of Director Members and the three most recent scholarship recipients who are members of the National Young Leader Committee.

The theme of CUCC’s conference was ‘Our Time is Now’. Through my CUYLM experience I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of fantastic young leaders who are doing great things in their credit unions and for the MB system. I encourage you to put your name forward, speak with your manager or coach