This year Volano Solutions had the honor of serving on the Technology Committee for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce’s Young Professionals Organization, or YP Omaha. The Omaha YP’s mission is to retain and attract young professionals to Omaha through engagement, opportunity and advocacy. This year’s YP Summit was the 10th and featured an impressive array of local and national speakers whose focus was empowerment. The goal of the summit was to not only inspire Omaha’s young to seek more meaningful involvement in their careers, civic lives and respective passions but to also facilitate in that involvement.

This year’s opening speaker was Mike Smith, a former Imperial Nebraska native who started The Bay and Skate for Change, creating a place for young people to get together with the mission of helping the homeless. Urban Revitalization Strategist Majora Carter challenged attendees on the imperative of reshaping blighted neighborhoods and social impact strategist Erica Williams gave an extremely well-received closing talk. In between this impressive line-up, a host of speakers gave break-out presentations that ranged from transcending drug addiction and the art of conversation to successful, local young entrepreneurs and founders of non-profits. The Summit, held at the Century Link Center downtown was well attended with over 1,300 YP’s. Attendance has gradually crept up since the first YP Summit. Post-summit buzz and media coverage was strong as well.

Omaha is a unique community and an ideal place to start a business. There are five fortune 500 companies headquartered out of Omaha and clearly a strong network and support for small business to connect. Volano Solutions made a decision early on to actively engage in the community and offer help where we can to support our peers and add our expertise to civic-minded programs that line up well with our mission and standards. YP Omaha was the perfect opportunity. The YP Summit was an ideal and well planned event. Meaningful change requires a lot of heart but a greater amount of patience, pragmatism, skill, leverage and execution. This year’s summit inspired action and then provided tactical steps and direction as to how to get involved in meaningful change, allowing for multiple subject matter experts to speak to smaller break-out groups interested in their particular mission.