Mary Jane Hatton plays key role in Leadership Keweenaw

Leadership Keweenaw’s first year provides training for professionals in the Keweenaw

Leadership Keweenaw is an exciting new program offered in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula that began in the fall of 2016 and is running through spring 2017. Sponsored by the Keweenaw Chamber of Commerce, it is a nine-month program teaching leadership skills to its participants. After an initial, intensive, two-day retreat in August, the participants attend sessions once a month learning leadership skills through a myriad of activities and exercises. They meet and interact with community leaders around town, in city offices, the courts and other government buildings.

Mary Jane Hatton

Along with the monthly leadership training sessions, Keweenaw Leadership participants meet guest speakers knowledgeable in a wide-range of topics from water rights to forestry management to Dial Help a local organization with a wide-range of services for citizens in need of help. The participants work in teams on major 60-hour projects that benefit the community in any number of ways. Some of the projects the participants have tackled this year are:

• Revamp of the Chamber of Commerce’s Ambassador Program to identify what went wrong with the first iteration of the program. Then instituting a model that would achieve the Chamber’s desired result from the program.
• HEET (Houghton Energy Efficiency Team). Bring an energy challenge online and bring community awareness to this challenge.
• Keweenaw Professionals Job Network – relocation resources – Currently, relocation to the Keweenaw is mostly self-initiated. With the help of the Chamber and the job network, our community wishes to help with the relocation process by educating potential Keweenaw professionals on employment possibilities in the area, entertainment hot spots and local business community information.
• Snow removal in Calumet. This team has been charged with analyzing the current expenditures of snow removal in Calumet and to see if there is a more affordable and efficient way for this to be provided.

ISB Associate Professor of Management Mary Jane Hatton is currently serving on the steering committee for the Leadership Keweenaw program. According to Hatton, “Leadership Keweenaw is a dynamic program that facilitates the development of the participant’s leadership abilities through skills training, community involvement and networking. We’re developing our next generation of leaders today.”

MTEC SmartZone CEO Marilyn Clark praised the work Professor Hatton has done as a member of the steering committee. “Mary Jane has been a valuable part of the committee. It’s all volunteer work, and we are lucky to have her energy helping our community,” commented Clark.

Over the summer, two interns from the Finlandia International School of Business completed internships with the Keweenaw Chamber of Commerce. Aoi Buto and Theresa Wolfe spent time working on Leadership Keweenaw for the Chamber of Commerce. They were able to meet and work with local community leaders, as well as apply their advanced Excel skills in setting up a database systems for the program. They also archived chamber records dating from the 1950s.

Christopher Hatton, Adjunct Professor in the ISB also serves on the steering committee for the Leadership Keweenaw 2016-2017 program. For more information on Leadership Keweenaw go to keweenaw.org/leadership-keweenaw.