Am I a Brand?

I haven't written much about my personal experiences here in Omaha because I want to be discreet about things. But yesterday I went to the Omaha Women's Leadership Conference and it really brought together all of the reasons that it was the right decision for me to move here. It wasn't seeing Suze Orman that did it (although she was awesome). It was a session on branding yourself and furthering your career and for the first time I see my path and I see this as a career.

My speech last week rocked. Leadership Omaha is a fabulous program for young leaders in the city and they spend a year learning all about the city and how they can be leaders here. We talked about databases and far too many of them didn't know that we had them at all. In fact, many of them didn't even have a library card.

And I see an opportunity. These are our future leaders, our future supporters and our future independent funders. The library needs to reach out to them. Yesterday, while feeling so inspired, I decided that I want to figure out a way to go to them and teach them how to use our very expensive databases. At our weekly marketing meeting, the assistant director mentioned that several people yesterday talked about outreach to the business community. I felt bad immediately because I had the same idea at the same time and that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to work on something I felt so passionate about.

But then I thought about the self-branding session. The instructor said that we should take every opportunity to be involved in the things that matter most to us and the things that will help us look good to the people who matter. So instead of sulking about a missed opportunity (like I felt like doing), I asked the assistant director if I might be involved. Not only did she say yes but we met after the meeting, I'm now in charge of contacting the Leadership Omaha people to offer our services and I have the opportunity to teach some of the sessions.

All it took was asserting myself and asking. Have I mentioned that I love the Omaha Public Library? This city is on the brink of a library revolution and I'm thrilled to be a part of it!