The graduates of this year’s Leadership Grayson County program were recognized at Thursday’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon, which was hosted by Twin Lakes Regional Medical Center.
This year’s class was made up of 14 men and women who hail from a variety of backgrounds, but have all united with the goal of bettering Grayson County.
The program, which has a long-standing record of turning out committed leaders who continue to enrich our community year after year, requires participants to dedicate one day a month to increasing their knowledge of our community, how it functions, and how to best work toward improving it.
“We visit different organizations with the main focus on government, manufacturing, education, and law and justice,” said Chamber Director Tara Elder.
When asked which sector had the most impact on this year’s Leadership class, Elder said, “they were fascinated with the whole range of things we have to offer here. There’s such a wide range of manufacturing, for example, we do plastics and cheese, the parts made at MTD, and Caught Ya Lookin’.”
Elder also noted about this year’s group, “They’re very successful leaders already in our community. I just look forward to the future and what they decide to do now that they’ve gone through Leadership Grayson County.”
Former program participant Derek Clemons addressed the group about the importance of being “the change you want to see in Grayson County.”
Clemons explained that we so often hear about the things ‘they’ should be doing, but we need to instead focus on what ‘we’ can do.
He said of the program, “we do it to bring about an understanding of the needs and issues that affect the whole county and each of its communities so that we have more people taking about ‘we’ and fewer talking about ‘they.’”
He spoke directly to the leaders who just completed the class and told them, “we all can contribute in our own ways and with a broader perspective on our county; we can begin to see the forest instead of the trees, have empathy for one another and move the whole county forward together.”













