Sadie Vander Velde, photographed on location at Grande Cheese Company, leads Envision Greater Fond du Lac and its talent attraction efforts.
Photographs by Shane Van Boxtel, Image Studios | Styling by Shalene Enz
Hazen Norton used to think he would have to leave Northeast Wisconsin to pursue a science career. That all changed for the St. Mary’s Springs Academy sophomore after he attended the Young Leaders Breakfast hosted by Young Professionals of Fond du Lac (YPF), a program of Envision Greater Fond du Lac.
The December event convened 68 local young professionals from nearly 20 different industries with 178 students from nine high schools to share career experiences and advice through round-table discussions and a question-and-answer panel.
During the event, Norton connected with Mikayla Haack, a 23-year-old food scientist at Fond du Lac’s Grande Cheese Company. The meeting led to Norton completing a job shadow with Haack that included performing a variety of experiments applying food science to real life, like making mayonnaise and cream cheese substitutes.
Norton says his job shadow with Haack was transformative.
“It definitely opened my mind,” he says. “I thought food science was a very limited field, but after the job shadow I saw how many roles there are in food sciences as a whole.”
More importantly, Norton’s experience at the Young Leaders Breakfast caused him to reconsider a belief held by many young people in the New North — that pursuing their career aspirations will require relocating.
“Prior to this I did think that,” Norton says, “but honestly, even within Fond du Lac, there are so many different roles that you could do within food science that I could stay here and find a career just fine.”
Envision Greater Fond du Lac President and CEO Sadie Vander Velde says the economic development organization believes so strongly in the need for next-generation attraction and retention that it was made one of the pillars of Envision’s 2022-25 strategic plan.
“We know that individuals ages 18 to 35 are the largest sector that’s leaving Fond du Lac County,” she says. “So we’re doing things that are really tailored to showcasing that you can have a career and have quality of life here.”
Anna Huck, Envision’s event specialist who oversees the 650-member YPF program, points to Norton’s experience as tangible evidence that network-building events like the Young Leaders Breakfast are working to meet those goals.
“These are the connections we are trying to cultivate, and we are seeing great success in events like this,” she says.
Building Identity
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2021 and 2031, the nation’s economy is projected to add about 8.3 million jobs, with employment reaching a level of 166.5 million by the end of the decade. Simultaneously, the population growth — which slowed to a historic low of 0.9% in 2021 — is expected to slow even further to 0.7% over the next decade.
In other words, there will be more jobs than people to fill them. According to employment data from March, there were 9.6 million open jobs, but only 5.9 million unemployed people looking for work.
Counties throughout the New North region, including Fond du Lac, are feeling the impact of this. Within a decade, 25% of Fond du Lac County’s population will be over the age of 65 and more than 34,000 individuals will transition into retirement. Declining birth rates and falling immigration, coupled with an aging population, has created what many economists have referred to as a “war for talent.”
At 37, Vander Velde is herself part of the under-40 set that communities and employers are clamoring to attract.
Vander Velde moved to Fond du Lac two years ago and has been described by colleagues as the “poster child for the success of YPF” in building networks that are attractive to young professionals. Vander Velde says her involvement in the group was a driving factor in her decision to relocate.
“I’ve always had this weird fascination and obsession with Fond du Lac,” says Vander Velde, who was named one of Insight’s 2023 40 Under 40. “I see so much potential here. And it was YPF that is one of the reasons I am where I am today and [shows] the importance of networking and relationship building.”
As part of its strategic plan development, Envision identified its core values, one of which is “steadfast optimism” — a value Vander Velde embodies anytime she speaks of the Herculean task of attracting and retaining young residents to the county.
“Actually, this last time we had the Concierge Luncheon, we had a number of folks [attend] who weren’t actually living in Fond du Lac,” she says. “Yet.”
“We know that individuals ages 18 to 35 are the largest sector that’s leaving Fond du Lac County, So we’re doing things that are really tailored to showcasing that you can have a career and have quality of life here.”
— Sadie Vander Velde, President and CEO, Envision Greater Fond du Lac
The Concierge Luncheon to which Vander Velde refers is one of Envision’s many efforts to support employers in their talent recruitment and retention efforts. The program works to integrate newcomers by showcasing quality of life and community amenities through customized events.
Highlighting Fond du Lac’s unique amenities and strong economic base are keys to establishing the county’s identity and attracting more people, Vander Velde says.
“For many years our tagline in Fond du Lac was, ‘well, we’re just an hour away from anything you want to do.’ That has been inhibiting us for a long time, because we’ve never focused on what we have here as amenities,” she says. “But we know we’re a great place to live. We know we’re a great place to play. We’ve known for a long time we’re a great place to work — and so we have to tell our story better.”
Envision has also partnered with Fond du Lac County and Fond du Lac County Capital Resources to develop the Worker Relocation Incentive Program, a county-wide workforce attraction and retention tool for employers. The program, the first of its kind in the state, provides businesses a 50% reimbursement on up to $15,000 in hiring incentives to prospective employees after they complete a year of full-time employment.
Since launching in September 2021, the program has incentivized 15 employees (six from out of state) to start new careers in Fond du Lac County.
Two additional programs, Project G.R.I.L.L. and Fond du Lac ROCK, target high school students who either don’t have plans to pursue post-secondary education or are interested in manufacturing careers. Vander Velde says these are demographics that are typically overlooked when discussing young professionals retention.
“Eighty percent of our workforce is deskless — meaning they are making the food, they’re making the widgets, milking the cows. There’s just never a lot of emphasis on them, so that was why we particularly chose to focus on that demographic,” she says. “In order to keep them here and not move away, we wanted to let them know that we value and respect them just as much as the person going to UW-Madison and that they have a home here, too.”
Finding A Fit
Attracting people to the New North is one piece of the talent puzzle — retention is another. And when it comes to retention, it’s all about building connections.
Fifteen years ago, Green Bay native Christine Gunderson left Northeast Wisconsin to pursue a degree in animal science at UW-River Falls. Her career took many turns in various parts of the state, from nonprofit youth outreach in Hudson to continuing education at UW-Stevens Point. Eventually Gunderson returned to Green Bay for her husband’s job.
Gunderson was pleasantly surprised by what she discovered — a growing number of cultural and entertainment venues, abundant dining options and more diversity — when reconsidering the city as a place to put down roots.
“Green Bay is not the city I left at 17,” she says. “If Green Bay had not grown to become what it is right now, I don’t know that I would have wanted to come back.”
Now, as the director of talent retention for the Greater Green Bay Chamber, Gunderson’s focus is on supporting and creating community for Greater Green Bay’s young professional talent.
“Everything we do in the talent retention space is really toward creating stronger connections,” says Gunderson, who also was named an Insight 2023 40 Under 40 award recipient. “If we want to retain talent and survive the war [for] talent, we need to help the people in our community find and create the right sense of belonging for themselves.”
Gunderson oversees chamber programs that aim to help young professionals find their fit in Green Bay: Current Young Professionals, Rising Current and Leadership Green Bay.
Current Young Professionals (CYP) is a membership-based program designed for individuals ages 21-40 to participate in professional development, social networking and community engagement events. CYP, which is made up of about 1,700 members, hosts three to six events per month. These range from evening happy hours to volunteer outings and, Gunderson’s favorite, CYP Plays — a monthly initiative for young professionals to play games and recreational sports. (“We didn’t stop wanting to do that,” she says. “We just grew up and ran out of people to do it with.”)
One of a community’s strongest assets in talent retention, Gunderson says, is a high-functioning, active young professionals network like CYP, which is nearly impossible for individual workplaces to replicate.
“You can only go so far with a personal friendship or a personal connection in the workplace, and you’re limited to the landscape of people that you’re going to connect with,” she says. “But if we can connect them further and across a variety of business sectors, then we’re more likely to help them find the people and the place that fit that specific person, because it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation.”
Young professional development is the responsibility of employees at every stage of their career, but particularly senior leaders and supervisors.
Gunderson says as decision-makers, leaders can support their young employees by investing in memberships, allowing and encouraging attendance at events, and clearly communicating expectations around their involvement in events during the work day.
“Helping them to understand expectations as a supervisor and how you support them creating their community here is huge,” she says. “The older generation has a big responsibility in supporting and making sure that these types of programs and these types of initiatives are successful.”
“I want a ROBUST landscape for all young professionals so that whether you are a young professional in Wausau, or Green Bay, or Hudson, there are networks that are thriving in all of those communities to help you thrive.”
— Christine Gunderson, director of talent retention, Greater Green Bay Chamber
Sustaining Networks Big And Small
Kara Homan, the city of Appleton’s community and economic development director, has seen economic development become more heavily focused on talent attraction and retention over the last several years.
“In Appleton one of our greatest strengths is that people want to live here or move here. Our greatest strength is our quality of place and quality of our neighborhoods,” says Homan, a 2015 recipient of the Future 15 award, presented by the Fox Cities Chamber’s Pulse Young Professionals Network. “Maybe they went away to college and started their career somewhere else, but they want to come back.”
Urban communities like Green Bay and Appleton have robust young professionals networks and numerous cultural amenities on which to hang their talent attraction hats. Rural communities need to be more creative.
Gene LeSage, director of total rewards at Waupaca Foundry, Inc., is co-chairman of Rising Leaders, a volunteer-run young professionals group supported by the Waupaca Area Chamber of Commerce. The Kentucky native has lived in Waupaca for the last eight years and has helped reignite the group, which holds monthly events in partnership with local businesses.
“About five or six years ago, a group tried to start [Rising Leaders] and they had about a year under their belt before it fizzled and then COVID hit,” he says. “We are in the second year of restarting it. It felt like after COVID we were all siloed, and being in a small town, that isn’t healthy.”
Gunderson says every community, regardless of size, has gaps to fill. The best approach is identifying and capitalizing on the unique strengths of an area, whatever they may be.
“We all have the same concern: We all need to build community for our young professionals so that they want to stay in our community. But how you do that and the mechanisms of what you have to work with is going to ebb and flow for every community,” she says.
Playing to the strengths of individual communities was one of the ideas behind the Wisconsin Young Professional Network Alliance, a new initiative Gunderson is launching as part of her work with the Greater Green Bay Chamber.
“We all have unique challenges, but we are all driving toward the same goal,” Gunderson says. “Coming together to better utilize and leverage what each network is doing to be stronger across the state is the only path forward. We can start to look at how we do that through this alliance.”
Gunderson says many volunteer-led networks can lose momentum, much like LeSage encountered in Waupaca. The creation of a statewide alliance could help solve that.
“I would like to see this become a self-sustaining alliance so that it is able to float between different chambers of commerce, and ebb and flow with the changes of staffing so it is sustainable beyond any one person,” she says.
While the Wisconsin Young Professional Network Alliance is still in its infancy, Gunderson is hopeful that it could eventually help sustain networks throughout the state while assisting communities and employers in finding innovative methods of attracting and retaining talent.
“I want to create something for Wisconsin,” she says. “I want a robust landscape for all young professionals so that whether you are a young professional in Wausau, or Green Bay, or Hudson, there are networks that are thriving in all of those communities to help you thrive.”
