For the last several years I have had the privilege of serving as a liaison between our industry and the Boy Scouts in Chicago. As a result, I have been able to suggest leaders from our industry to serve as chairs of the LaSalle Street Trading Tech Awards event.

 

This year, I wanted two women as co-chairs because this is the year girls are coming into Cub Scouts, and next year they will be able to join Scouts BSA, the new name for Boy Scouts.

 

Former Cboe General Counsel Joanne Moffic-Silver and OCC’s Amy Shelly are this year’s co-chairs and are going to be great. They are the first women to chair what was once the LaSalle Street Dinner that started in 1971.

 

My personal mission this year for the LaSalle Street Trading Tech Awards is to raise money for a new award, the Fearless Girl National Youth Leadership Training Fund. I am raising the money to send 100 girls to the Scouts National Youth Leadership Training (“NYLT”) camp, which is a weeklong experience teaching the girls how Scouting works while developing their leadership skills. The goal of NYLT is to bring motivated, trained and enthusiastic leaders back to their units.

 

I learned of this idea from another Scout council when I attended the Boy Scouts Annual National Meeting in Dallas, TX this spring. One woman in that council donated the entire sum, $25,000, so 100 girls could go to NYLT.

 

I wanted to name this award after an accomplished woman leader in the industry who has been supportive of youth leadership and development efforts like Scouting in the past and approached Kelly Loeffler. She demurred having the award named for her, but suggested we name it after the Fearless Girl Statue, which is now located near the NYSE and to create support across our community to create a sustainable fund for our industry’s future leaders. I liked the idea. Kelly also pledged the seed funding to get this leadership training opportunity off the ground.  

 

Would you be willing to donate to the Fearless Girl National Youth Leadership Training Fund as we expand the Scouting program by bringing in more girls this year? Any amount is welcome to help reach our goal of $25,000 for 2018.

 

By expanding the Scouting program we are improving family’s lives by bringing girls and boys into the same program. And, this family scouting program is bringing more boys in too. Results from the early adopter program for Cub Scouts started in January showed that for every two new girls we were signing up, one new boy was also becoming a Scout.

 

My goal is to help turbocharge leadership development for girls joining the Scouts BSA program. This will help Scouts BSA as well as the Cub Scout program. And hopefully 100 girls will have this industry to thank for helping them develop their leadership skills.

 

Contact me at johnlothian@johnlothian.com if you are interested in donating to the Fearless Girl National Youth Leadership Training Fund by check or click HERE to donate online.

 

Thank you for your support of Scouting.

 

Yours Truly,

 

John J. Lothian

Executive Chairman & CEO

John J. Lothian & Company, Inc.