YGL: The Key to Establishing A Professional Organization in Your Agency

When I started work at United States Postal Service four years ago, I discovered that there was no real forum to meet other new professionals at our massive Headquarters facility. And while we had an official orientation and I was welcomed warmly by my colleagues in the Global Business Group, I felt that there was a real opportunity to build an organization where new employees could meet counterparts from across the organization’s many functional areas. It was about that time that I heard about YGL… here was an organization with members from across government with a mission of bringing together young feds and offering professional development opportunities. Here was an organization doing exactly what I was interested in doing at the agency level.

While the Postal Service is different in many ways from your traditional federal departments and agencies, employees have many of the same needs and goals. By bringing together a number of interested and energetic employees and leveraging my involvement in Young Government Leaders, we have now established a group at Headquarters called Emerging Postal Leaders (EPL). The groups are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, the EPL group complements YGL by taking advantage of many of YGL’s activities and creating opportunities to host joint events.

With the wave of federal retirements continuing, agencies will be recruiting large numbers of entry and mid-level professionals to fill the gap and that means great opportunities for YGL. But it also means opportunities for motivated individuals to start professional organizations in their respective agencies. The need is great! And there are already great examples of success such as the State Department’s YPro (the Society of Young Professionals). But I encourage new federal employees to take the initiative and seek out like-minded colleagues interested in learning more about the various parts of your agency and interested in climbing the management ranks. And while you’re at it… encourage your peers and colleagues to attend YGL’s diverse professional, social and community events as we work jointly to attract and keep our Nation’s best and brightest.

Bruce Marsh
Chairman, YGL Strategic Planning Committee
2007-2008