How the NPGA Young Professionals Council was formed

Stephanie Hennen, marketing manager for Lakes Gas, describes the journey to launching the National Propane Gas Association’s new Young Professionals Council and shares what she hopes it brings to the industry.

Read more:

• Young Professionals Council set to launch
• Recruiting tomorrow’s leaders – today
• 2021 LP Gas Rising Leader: Steph Hennen
• WINLPG names Steph Hennen as 2022 Young Woman of the Year

---

Transcription

“One of the biggest ways to get involved in the industry is to be on a committee, an NPGA committee, or council. However, there wasn’t a lot of options outside of that for young individuals to get involved. And sometimes when you’re coming into an NPGA board meeting, it can be a little intimidating. There’s people who have an insane amount of experience that are there.

“So the creation of this council is a choice and a chance for young individuals to utilize as a stepping stone, to start getting involved and get their feet wet, start interacting with individuals of their own age in the industry as well.

“I came to my very first board meeting and NPGA board meeting in 2018 and I came along with my dad, and I don’t think I would have done that if I didn’t have someone right next to me, because it is extremely intimidating coming coming into these meetings when you have very seasoned professionals who know so much about what they’re talking about, and you are fresh in your career, and you barely know where propane comes from. And so it’s scary to come in, and so to have this support system, have people in the council, who are very supportive of the industry and excited about it and able to kind of help guide new people in the industry along their side.

“That’s that’s a huge, huge reason why this council was started is to just have that support system and have people know that they have opportunities, and they have a big support system behind them.

“So this idea kind of came to me last summer, I’d say, around May. And so I had a conversation with some people at NPGA, and got the go-ahead to at least put a concept together. So I put a concept together, I presented that concept to the NPGA executive committee last September, and then they gave the go-ahead to move forward and put a formal presentation together. And so in January of this year, I presented again to the executive committee the idea of creating this Young Professionals Council. And then they gave us the go-ahead to present it to the board and bring it to the NPGA Board of Directors for a vote. So in February 2024, it went to a vote at the NPGA Board of Directors meeting, and we got approval to create the council.

“We’ve had a lot of support of the council from both young individuals who are able to be a part of the council and senior leaders who have made some comments, you know, I wish that something was around when I like this when I first joined the industry. And that’s our biggest goal, is to, you know, create a community – one of our biggest goals, we have a lot – to create a community of young individuals in the propane industry so that they know they have support from one another, but they also have an opportunity to learn and grow, both personally and professionally.

“We’ve noticed with the millennial and Gen Z generations, and I think it tends to be just people overall, is we always love to continue to learn, and that’s something that this council has the ability to do, even if you’re a seasoned veteran within this industry, 10-plus years, there’s always more things that you can learn.

“Our biggest benefit of membership is we’re going to be having monthly educational workshops and webinars. So the cool thing about this council is 90 percent of it is going to be online and virtual through Zoom calls and different webinars and whatnot.

“We have so many small, family-owned businesses in this industry, and sometimes they don’t have the resources or the capability to invest into their young employees, and so this is an outlet and a way that those companies are able to invest into their young employees for very minimal cost and not a ton of time on their behalf, but it still will allow their their employees, to really grow and develop.

“The impact that this council is going to have is going to be huge, because we’re two generations that are excited about change, that welcome change, and are ready to embrace change. When you are involved in the industry, and you come to industry events, there’s no way that you want to leave the industry after this, because you meet so many good people.

“I’m fully convinced that once you get someone involved in the industry, that nine times out of 10, they’re going to stay. They’re going to want to stay. And we’ve seen so many cases of that across our industry. Young individuals coming into this industry, I just hope that they know that they have support. They have people who are in their corner who want to see them do well.”