“Before Leadership Fellows, I kind of felt like I was on the outside looking in. Now, I’m even more involved in my community, having come out of the program feeling like there’s a lot more I can do.”
“Looking back, I think about how I would listen to all these interesting speakers and then come back to work, so excited to share what I’d learned,” says Rose Hopman, reflecting on her participation in Leadership Fellows Boulder County, a joint leadership development and networking program of the Community Foundation and the Boulder Chamber. “I wanted to tell everyone about the new ideas and connections I’d made, and discuss them further.”
We caught up with Rose recently, to learn how her experience in the leadership program (class of 2014-15) had perhaps inspired her civic participation since then.
“Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know,” laughs Rose, a CSU graduate who’s now a Community Support Services representative at the Longmont location of High Plains Bank. “Leadership Fellows helped me realize how much I didn’t know about our community – and that there’s always more to learn, and different ways to be involved, whether in government, as a small business, or a nonprofit.
“Those were the biggest takeaways for me – learning from others, learning about other sectors, and deepening your awareness of how you can get involved and make a difference.”
That said, Rose isn’t new to civic participation. In addition to work and family – she lives in Longmont with her husband and their son – her long list of community engagement activities includes active roles with Longmont’s Multicultural Action Committee, the Rotary Club of Longmont St. Vrain, the OUR Center, El Comité de Longmont, Intercambio Uniting Communities, Boy Scout Troop 64, and several more committees on behalf of her immediate neighborhood and surrounding community, and through the Bank on Boulder County Coalition.
“I like to help people,” she says simply. “And I’m one of those people, when I start helping, I can’t stop…
“But when my boss [John Creighton, a former Trustee of the Community Foundation and President & CEO of High Plains Bank] suggested the Leadership Fellows program to me, I remember telling him that I’m already doing a lot – and that it might be too much.
“I’m so glad I went through with it, though – because before Leadership Fellows, I kind of felt like I was on the outside looking in. Now, I’m even more involved in my community, having come out of the program feeling like there’s a lot more I can do.
“Leadership Fellows puts you in the middle of things – as much as you want to be.”
As an Hispanic woman who grew up in a Hispanic community in Fort Collins, Rose never felt different, so she was also surprised to learn through the Leadership Fellows program that some Boulder County Hispanics and other minorities are sometimes treated differently.
“I never felt like there was anything I couldn’t do,” she explains. “So it was an awakening for me to realize that some people in my own community feel like there’s always something or someone standing in their way.”
Concludes Rose, “Leadership Fellows made me more aware of the community I live in, and gave me more confidence to do the things I do in my neighborhood and in my community. As a result, I feel more connected, and I enjoy my community more.”
