By Dave Hodges
June 20, 2010
Tyler Huston is not just content to call himself a Florida State University graduate and a financial adviser for Northwestern Mutual Life. He’s quick to point out he’s a Tallahassee resident.
For Huston, 25, part of his education as a student and thereafter has been getting acquainted with the community as a young professional.
“There is so much about Tallahassee that the university doesn’t know,” he said of his college environment. “The more I found out about Tallahassee, the more I liked it.”
As a growing number of young professionals have done, he has made the community connection, becoming president of the Network of Young Professionals and making a commitment to expanding the group’s roster to 150 paid members. “We’re on track to do that,” he added.
He grew up about 10 miles from West Point in the town of Washingtonville, N.Y. As a youth, he participated in the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, a four-day intensive training that the organization sponsors to build future leaders. It was a turning point for him.
“I am very extroverted at this point in my life and I can trace that right back to my experience at the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards,” he said of the change in his confidence. Today, he belongs to the Sunrise Rotary Club in Tallahassee.
No surprise then that he was the district chair for the event this year, working with youth from North Florida who are on the cusp of taking charge as leaders, but who need a boost.
Dr. Bill Martin, a fellow Rotarian who is an orthodontist in Chiefland, noticed the young guy who was in charge of the RYLA program this year.
“The thing that impressed me the most was that someone as young as he is would take on something like this, and he did an excellent job,” Martin said of Huston.
“It’s hard to find young guys who are sort of going after it at that level. He was like a breath of fresh air,” Martin said.
In Tallahassee, Huston said he’d like to see more young adults get involved the Network of Young Professionals. The Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce’s Access Tallahassee organization, likewise, extends a similar invitation to young professionals ages 21 to 40.
“What I would like to see is more diversity in terms of demographics and industry,” Huston explained. He believes the growth will be there eventually. “It probably won’t happen as quickly as it should.”
Mallory Brooks serves on NYP’s executive board. She, too, found her place in Tallahassee after graduating four years ago from FSU. “My experience has been great. I have met a whole lot of people and made a lot of great friends as well,” she said, her connection to the community that much stronger.
