Renee Custer
Catherine Hoover
For organizations, a New Year can mean many new things—a new budget, new priorities, a renewed focus.
The changes ahead for Harrisburg Young Professionals are especially profound.
This month, HYP will have its first new president in two years and, for the first time in its history, the top leadership will be mostly female as Catherine Hoover takes over as president and Casey Curry as vice president. HYP also has a female executive director, Renee Custer, holding the only non-volunteer position in the organization.
“By the nature of our organization, being young professionals, we constantly bring in new, fresh ideas, and, really, that’s what speaks to us as we continue to evolve—having the new ideas and new membership,” said Hoover, who will lead about 1,500 civic-minded professionals working to better our region, taking the helm from Meron Yemane, who served two terms.
Hoover is the perfect example of this continual elevation and fresh thinking.
“I was first introduced through our sports leagues… then started getting involved in the outreach committee, and I did that for a couple years,” she said. “Then I chaired the outreach committee, and then got on the board of directors. Two years ago, I was the secretary, and, last year, I was the vice president.”
Since its founding 16 years ago, HYP’s primary mission has been, as its slogan says, to make Harrisburg “a great place to live, work and play,” a concept Hoover is passionate about.
“We are here to outshine some of the negative press Harrisburg receives,” she said. “We believe we’re in a unique position to really make a difference in Harrisburg.”
While HYP’s new leadership is largely female, the organization’s membership is still roughly split in half in between men and women. A similar ratio is represented in HYP’s executive board. There is also another male vice president, Ace Reddy.
HYP is actually designed so that leaders change often, with the presidency usually a one-year term. This fluid structure helps keep ideas fresh and, importantly, helps cultivate future leaders and foster leadership skills for the Harrisburg area in general.
“The second half of our mission is developing and retaining future leaders, and I think that’s largely what you see in our leadership,” explained Custer.
Hoover noted that the vibrancy of the organization also has helped attract new members, feeding the cycle of leadership and, more generally, helping the city prosper.
“Fifteen years ago, the need that HYP saw was to bring young people into the city and show them there is a quality of life here and continue to work to improve that,” said Custer. “As that happens, you continue to grow and grow. We do so many different things now than we did at our inception, and I think our impact is very wide.”
She told a story of economic development generated early on.
“This is a cool story. When HYP started, one of its first projects was to bring a Starbucks to Harrisburg, and that shows the city climate of that time. There was no coffee shop for people to go to in the city.”
Laughing, she explained the basic necessity of it.
“We have to do our work, we need coffee,” she said. “So, they started this Starbucks campaign. They got stickers, buttons, signs, flyers, this whole thing, and that’s how Starbucks came to the Whitaker Center/Strawberry Square complex.”
Though just one example, it’s a perfect demonstration of how HYP promotes positive change and economic development. This important role, in fact, was recently officially recognized, as HYP received the 2013 Catalyst Award from the Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC for helping to make the region a better place to be and do business.
In its maturity, HYP now hosts a multitude of events and initiatives, including city beautification, outreach, arts, economic development and many sports leagues, along with other committees, social occasions and community events, all with a focus to enrich the capital city.
This year, HYP is working on a beautification project for the Market Square Transfer Center.
“We are partnering with Capital Area Transit on a large beautification of that area,” said Custer. “HYP is contributing new planter boxes and lighting in the area.”
Hoover also shed light on a few projects.
“Our arts committee will be starting new initiatives on cultural revitalization, and there’s also a big Forster Street cleanup, which our founder started 15 years ago,” she said.
This month, HYP will participate in a regional Young Professional event, where similar organizations from across the midstate will come together to network.
Later this year, HYP will conduct its Civic Survey, which it holds every year to take the pulse of its membership on a wide range of issues. While discussing the results of the 2013 survey, Custer explained what she found most interesting.
“We ask two questions, one after the other,” she said. “The first is, ‘on a scale of one to 10, rate the quality of life in Harrisburg.’ The next is, ‘on a scale of one to 10, rate the potential of Harrisburg.’ The quality of life question gets sixes and sevens; the potential of Harrisburg gets nines and 10s.”
In other words, people feel already feel pretty good about Harrisburg, but are very optimistic for its future. It’s the continuing mission of HYP to help to close that gap between potential and reality.
Learn more about Harrisburg Young Professionals by visiting www.hyp.org.
