Congratulations to two Manitoba credit union employees for receiving the Canadian Credit Union Association's 2021 National Credit Union Young Leader Award!

Amanda Gilchrist (Assiniboine Credit Union) and Rob Unruh (Access Credit Union) are two of the five award finalists announced during the 2021 CCUA Virtual Annual General Meeting.

The National Credit Union Young Leaders Award recognizes young leaders in Canada's credit union system. The award helps identify the best and brightest young employees, motivate them, and publicize their accomplishments to inspire others.

Amanda and Rob are keen contributors to young leader initiatives at the provincial level, as members of Credit Union Young Leaders of Manitoba (CUYLM) Executive Committee. Amanda currently serves as the CUYLM Committee Chair, and Rob is a recent alumni of the committee, with a term that concluded in January 2021.

CCUA will be hosting a presentation to honour the National Young Leader Award recipients on June 7, 2021 at 2pm CST. Register for the event here.

One of the five award winners will be selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship. The scholarship recipient will be named during the 2021 National Conference for Canada's Credit Unions.

Members of CUYLM had the opportunity to attend the National Young Leaders CU NEXTGEN session, part of CCUA’s National Conference for Canada’s Credit Unions in Winnipeg on May 5-6, 2019, along with other young leaders from across Canada.

CU NEXTGEN, designed exclusively for credit union young leaders, was a 1.5 day session that emphasized skill development, knowledge application and networking opportunities, and featured speaker Drew Dudley, of Day One Leadership.

Called one of the most inspirational TED speakers in the world, Drew Dudley is on a mission to help people discover the leader within. With more than five million views, his TED talk “Everyday Leadership (The Lollipop Moment)” redefined leadership — it’s not a characteristic of an elite few, but one that lives within all of us. Through his high-energy talks, Dudley shares practical and actionable insights on creating cultures of leadership that lead to higher levels of pride, productivity, and happiness. He empowers audiences to believe that they are leaders and gives them the tools needed to make a difference.

Drew guided participants through a deep dive of six key leadership values, and presented ‘The Leadership Test’ - an easy-to-apply approach to consistently engage in positive leadership behaviours. Key values Drew explored were: impact, growth, courage, empowerment, class and self respect.

The National Young Leaders Award recognizes young leaders in the Canadian credit union system. The experience has been referred to as "life-changing" by some of the former award winners who have grown into executive level leadership positions in our system.

The National Young Leaders Committee wants to ensure all young leaders (or their prospective nominators) have the chance to learn about the award process before the March 1, 2019 deadline. The committee is hosting a webinar on Thursday January 17, 2019, and hopes anyone who is even remotely curious about the award and the experience takes the hour to join them.

The webinar will provide an overview of the nominations and award selection process and feature insights and advice from previous winners of the National Young Leaders Award. Register for the webinar here.

By Joty Bath, James Grosskopf, and Rachel Tripp.

In May, 2017, the three winners of CUYLM’s Big Idea Challenge had the opportunity to attend the National Young Leaders Conference (NYL) in Halifax, Nova Scotia as the prize for their winning entry. Here is what the three Young Leaders from Westoba Credit Union had to say about their experience at the NYL Conference.

“What we found was the most refreshing attending the NYL conference was that we had the chance to speak about relevant Credit Union challenges with other passionate Credit Union employees and come up with solutions together. It doesn’t matter if you are from the East Coast, West Coast, or anywhere in between – we all face the same challenges.

The guest speakers had a fantastic way of getting the entire group engaged and kept up the group interactions as well. If you are looking for a way to make a difference in our Credit Union System – attending the NYL conference is sure a great way to start! Our biggest takeaway was the networking opportunities with like minded Credit Union Young Leaders. It’s amazing to be surrounded by so many people who are passionate about doing what’s best for our members.

The guest speakers were all phenomenal; they focused on very relevant issues that we experience daily. It’s incredibly reassuring to see that the Credit Union system is so aware of the challenges we face and that we are ready to tackle whatever comes our way. Lastly, we did also get to have a lot of fun out there!”

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