The annual PMRC Young Professionals Summit merges motivational speaking, education, and networking for the rising generation of movers and shakers on Friday, November 17, from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Conference Center at Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, in West Windsor. Cost: $85; $70 members. For more information or to register, visit www.princetonmercerchamber.org.
Registration, networking, the exhibitor pass, and breakfast kick off the event, followed by opening remarks at 8:45 a.m. Attendees can choose from three topics in two breakout sessions, the first at 9 and the latter at 10:10 a.m. Both run for 50 minutes each, with a networking and exhibitor break in between.
The “Young Professional of the Year” ceremony is next at 11:05 a.m. This year’s recipient is Josh Harry, the regional director of Sky Zone, a franchise of indoor trampoline parks with a location in Hamilton, where Harry started in 2019 until he was promoted to his current position in August.
Harry now oversees operations at several of these “family entertainment centers” in New Jersey, Connecticut, and California. Harry began his career as a retail team member at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson before rising to management positions there and at iPlay America in Freehold.
Harry is also a travel agent with his own full-service company, Josh Harry Travel, and serves on boards for organizations like the Robert Wood Johnson Young Professional Group in the greater Mercer County area.
The next item on the schedule is a one-hour address from keynote speaker Will Dennis, the founder and president of UnScripted Productions, “a company that specializes in harnessing the transformative power of applied improvisation to drive team building, communication, problem-solving, and innovation” through interactive workshops.
In “The Other AI: Applied Improvisation for Professional and Personal Growth,” Dennis will discuss the benefits of incorporating improvisational principles in practical, everyday life situations.
As the world becomes “increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, the most crucial competitive edge is cultivating our innate human capabilities,” he says in the event materials, illustrating how off-the-cuff comedy can “empower participants to unlock uniquely human skills like creativity, emotional intelligence, adaptability, collaboration, and communication.”
“The future belongs to those who can evolve their essential human abilities. While AI excels at analysis, this ‘other AI’ equips you to master imagination, ideation, and authentic connection. Unlock these superpowers through the unscripted playbook of improv — the skills that enable human potential to flourish,” Dennis continues.
The first breakout session features Olivia Atkin, the founder and owner of Achieving Success LLC, who presents “Building Your Personal Brand, Creates Massive Success.” Atkin is a consultant and career development coach, the author of “Achieving Success in Career Development,” and the host of the podcast “Achieving Success with Olivia Atkin.”
According to the event materials, her session will explore how to create a professional and personal brand, identify your skills or superpower(s), use them to build that brand, understand the value of self-branding, and how to grow it through networking.
The second breakout session is with Erin Bogdan, a “trauma-informed authenticity and confidence coach” who is also the founder of Becoming You LLC. In “Creating Habits & Routines that ACTUALLY Stick: A Journey to Radical Self-Love,” Bogdan expresses her mission to “wake up unfulfilled ambitious high-achievers and people-pleasers to find their voice, own their power, and claim their worth to become their most confident, capable, authentic selves so that they can create a life filled with peace, happiness, and freedom.”
Bogdan wants to help professionals realize their life’s purpose and understand that what they’ve been looking for has been inside them all along, just in need of alignment.
“Experiencing deep peace, happiness, and freedom begins with reconnecting back to you and cultivating a relationship with you, one that’s built on self-love, kindness, compassion, and acceptance,” the PMRC materials continue.
The third breakout session is a “Passion in the Work Place” panel discussion with moderator Niki Patel, a medical accounts director at healthcare company Novo Nordisk, and featuring experts Erin Klebaur, president of marketing agency Imbue Creative, and Sandra Toussaint, president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Mercer County.
According to her PMRC bio, Patel’s role focuses on consulting with those healthcare employers, entities, and plan providers to improve health conditions, especially cardiometabolic diseases, through “appropriate medical management.”
Patel, who has a PharmD and an MBA, was previously an adjunct professor at Long Island University, where she developed “the first Intro to Pharmaceutical Industry course [and] served as [an] advisor for a pharmacy student leadership organization.”
According to her biography on the UWGMC website, Toussaint has more than 20 years of nonprofit experience and served as the organization’s vice president of resource development and strategic partnerships before being appointed to the executive leadership position in 2016.
She began her career in the insurance industry before moving on to work for New York-based organizations such as Youth Communication, the state chapter of Special Olympics, the Twenty-First Century Foundation, the National Audubon Society, and the United Way of New York City.
Klebaur is a business leader known for working with clients on successful branding and marketing opportunities, as well as her affiliations with multiple groups throughout the Mercer County area. PMRC designated her as one of its “Champions for Business” this past February.
As Imbue’s former director of client success, Klebaur was named president of the company in 2020, succeeding founder Michael Piperno. Previously, she spent more than a decade at the marketing and association management firm CMA, or CMA Results, in Princeton Junction.
The PMRC Young Professionals Summit concludes the day with the announcement of the exhibitor pass prize winners and closing remarks.
