It seems to be the season for graduation and change, and it’s no different for the 2009 Leadership Portland class, who graduated into Alumni-hood today. I went to the event at NW Natural, who graciously hosted the event, and was sincerely blown away by the amazing community projects the class put together.

Broken up into 6 teams, the 34 member class was give the charge of benefiting a community nonprofit with a project. The nonprofits who garnered the support from the teams were Open Meadow, Hands On Greater Portland, Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland, Young Entrepreneurs, Friendly House and Sowing Seeds of Success. From generating marketing concepts to creating a program gives kids needed dental services, all the projects gave back to the community in a meaningful way.

Congratulations, graduates. Thank you to the Portland Business Alliance for continuing such an important program for leaders, and the member companies who sponsored the class participation. Also, a big thank you goes out to the Leadership Portland Program Committee, made up largely of past graduates, who help put on the program days throughout the year.

Introducing the Leadership Portland Class of 2009:

Mayra Arreola, OAME; Ann Berryman, OMSI; Jeff Borlaug, Norris, Beggs & Simpson; Kacia Brockman, Energy Trust of Oregon, Kristen Brown, NW Natural; Rebecca Brown, Comcast; Toni Carlo, United Way of Columbia-Willamette; R.J. Cervantes, Office of Multnomah County, Commissioner Deborah Kafoury; Bill Christensen, Portland Trail Blazers; Michelle Correll, Wells Fargo; Sarah Crooks, Perkins Coie; Shuki Einstein, CH2M HILL; Jennifer Ewell, Knowledge Learning Corporation; Lisa Fajardo-Faust, Pacific Continental Bank; Caroline Harris Cowne, Tonkon Torp LLP; Dana Haynes, Portland Community College; Margie Humphreys, Portland Center for the Performing Arts; Lisa Hylton, Willamett University for MBA Professionals; Craig Johanson, Hitachi Consulting; Leanne Johnston, Elliott Associates, Inc.; Brandon Kirkbride, Bank of America; Elizabeth Knight, Dunn Carney Allen Higgins & Tongue, LLP; David Lippoff, Edelman; Anthony Miller, Stepping Stone Solutions; Lexie Mobley, Consolidated Federal Credit Union; Stephanie Morgan, American Red Cross Oregon Trail Chapter; Kari Nordquist, ACME Business Consulting, LLC; Matthew Norman, Fortis Construction Inc.; Jeon Resvani, Con-way; Veronica Rinard, Travel Portland; Ryan Robinson, Oregon State University Foundation; Gregory Saliba, Capital Pacific Bank; Jeffery Savage, Wells Fargo, Stan Sittser, Portland General Electric; Dana Tierney, Regence; Cyrus Vafi, US Bank.

They said that being part of Leadership Portland would be beneficial to our day jobs. And it’s already proven true for me.

Our six-person project team (which has absolutely mastered the ability to turn a happy hour into a committee meeting) picked Open Meadow for our project. Open Meadow is an alternative middle and high school program in Portland that has a 20-year track record for taking students who have dropped out, or who are about to, and getting them to graduate and get into college.

I was so moved by my tour of the Open Meadow schools that I asked if any of their alumni were at Portland Community College. That’s where I work, as the college’s public affairs manager.

Sure enough, they told me about Adrian Thompson, who is a student leader at our Cascade Campus in north Portland.

As luck would have it, my quarterly magazine, PCC Communities, was in need of a student feature for the summer issue. And the story of a guy who went from drop-out to student leader in college seemed as compelling as any I’d ever heard.

Adrian’s story appears in the summer issue of PCC Communities, which gets mailed out to 300,000 homes in the metro area next week.

Dana