Events

Scott Schwefel works with organizations who want to leverage new communication strategies to increase sales, profits and productivity. As a serial entrepreneur, Scott founded and grew Minnesota’s largest technology training company to over $12MM, and then sold the company in 2003.

His company was named one of the 50 fastest growing private companies in Minnesota in 1997 and 1998, and he was named to Minnesota’s 40 under 40 list of successful top executives. Scott then founded and grew Insights Twin Cities to over $3MM and sold it to Insights in Scotland in 2014.

Scott Schwefel has been speaking and teaching new communication strategies to organizations globally for over a decade. He has presented in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Shanghai, and Kuwait, and he has also trained and coached over 1500 CEOs personally.

He is a published author, has lived remotely with the Hadza and Maasai tribes in Tanzania, and is a featured speaker for Vistage, the largest organization of CEOs in the world.

https://discoveryourself.com/

Ethan Kehrberg, Sustainability Specialist, City of Golden Valley

Ethan Kehrberg graduated from St. Olaf College, interned at a renewable energy company, and completed a service year through Minnesota GreenCorps before joining the City of Golden Valley in 2022. He currently works on recycling and waste reduction, energy efficiency, electrification, climate resilience, and a variety of other sustainability initiatives.  Ethan grew up in Golden Valley and is passionate about protecting the planet while making Golden Valley a greener, healthier, and more equitable community for everyone.

Also presenting with Ethan is Andrea Knoll. Knoll is serving a one-year service term with Minnesota GreenCorps, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency-coordinated program training a new generation of environmental professionals. As a GreenCorps member, Andrea assists City staff with environmental health-related projects and initiatives through community outreach, site assessments, and data collection and analysis. Following her service term, Andrea plans to pursue a graduate degree in environmental science and continue her work preserving and protecting Minnesota’s ecosystems and communities.

Not a meeting to be missed! The Golden Valley Rotary Club members will have a discussion on membership, leadership opportunities, grants, and future projects, etc. You'll definitely want to attend this Rotary meeting to contribute to the important Club conversations. We'll also be discussing our upcoming Taste & Tour of Golden Valley event, scheduled for Thursday, July 25. To put on a successful event, we will need all hands on deck with the planning. There are many opportunities to make a difference in this project! Look forward to seeing you there!

Emily Wallace-Jackson is the Executive Director of the Hopkins Education Foundation (HEF), a nonprofit that kickstarts learning opportunities for students in the Hopkins Public Schools. She served on the HEF Board of Directors from 2014 through 2019, and was president of the board during that time. She also worked as the Executive Director of the Seven Dreams Education Foundation that supported Robbinsdale Area Schools. Emily and her husband raised their three children in Hopkins Schools. She has been a passionate advocate for Hopkins schools and public education, serving as a member and co-chair of the Hopkins Legislative Action Coalition. Emily has also served as a commissioner on three City of Hopkins commissions: Human Rights Commission, Charter Commission, and Zoning & Planning Commission. Earlier in her career, Emily worked as an attorney and also volunteered as a pro bono attorney for clients at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. https://www.hopkinseducationfoundation.org/

Trey Gladney, originally from Houston, takes pride in his deep integration into Minnesota over the past two decades. Alongside his wife and three children, he has embraced the State of Hockey as his own, immersing himself in its culture, communities, and yes, even its cold.

With degrees from the University of Minnesota and Hamline School of Business, Trey's academic journey paved the way for a successful career in management consulting. For the last 15 years, he's been a leader in simplifying healthcare systems. His expertise in process improvement, technology implementation, and change management led him to work with many of the top consulting firms.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Trey is dedicated to civic engagement. He chairs the PEACE commission in Golden Valley, focusing on police employment, accountability, and community engagement. Additionally, he leads PRIME, striving for racial equity and inclusion in Golden Valley.

Despite his busy schedule, Trey finds solace in movement. Whether cycling through Theodore Park or strolling along Golden Valley Road, he's always exploring and connecting with his surroundings.

In all aspects of his life, Trey is driven by a relentless pursuit of progress and a passion for positive change, aiming to create a more inclusive and equitable world for everyone.

Jeff Molby is from Caro, Michigan. After becoming treasurer of his son's boy scout troop, Jeff went to visit the troop’s sponsor: the Rotary Club of Caro, Michigan. He was blown away by the warm welcome and the values embodied in the Four-Way Test, so a couple weeks later he had his red badge. Around the same time, Jeff attended his first Relay For Life. He loved the way they fight the global scourge of cancer in a profoundly local way. He started small and eventually took on an outsized role to help restart things after Covid. He recently turned his attention to the American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program. They too needed a post-pandemic boost, so Jeff combined his love of traveling and cycling to his fight against cancer, setting off on a multi-year bike tour around the country in order to raise money and recruit drivers to get patients to their lifesaving treatments. https://chemoriders.org/Rotary/

The Golden Valley Rotary Club will gather with members of the community to celebrate all things Rotary during the 2023-2024 year. We will present the Citizen of the Year award and the Rotarian of the Year award. Our high school scholarship recipients will be honored. Shep Harris, Club President, will pass the gavel to incoming Club President, Bryan Rossi. A great celebratory event in the fifty-one year history of the Golden Valley Rotary Club!

RSVP here: https://forms.gle/s367ieyq7qauoWE3A

No meeting on Tuesday, July 2 due to the 4th of July holiday. Happy 4th of July!

Rotary July 9: Rotary Summer Family Picnic at New Hope YMCA

New Hope YMCA
Splash Pad & Picnic Area (Families/Partners invited!)

7601 N 42nd Ave.
New Hope, MN 55427
Phone: (763) 535-4800
https://www.ymcanorth.org/locations/new_hope_ymca

RSVP HERE

Sharon is the District 5950 Governor for 2024/2025 year from Minneapolis Rotary Club #9. She just celebrated her 20th anniversary in Rotary last year!

Sharon owns one of the largest private investment firms wholly owned by a woman in Minnesota and Florida. She says she attributes much of this success to Rotary. This is where she learned her public speaking and leadership skills, and her fellow Rotarians mentored her and welcomed her into this community. She is committed to giving back to Rotary. Last year she completed the largest ever fundraiser for our Rotary District – raising $3 million on top of the usual annual $1 million as District Foundation Chair.

For fun she coaches the top 150 women in global tennis on financial behaviors. She is a five-time MN State Fair blue ribbon winning flower arranger, and she collects shoes of very famous women including Margaret Thatcher and Audrey Hepburn.

Not a meeting to be missed! The Golden Valley Rotary Club members will have a discussion on membership, leadership opportunities, grants, and future projects, etc. You'll definitely want to attend this Rotary meeting to contribute to the important Club conversations. We'll also be debriefing about the 2024 Taste & Tour of Golden Valley event. Look forward to seeing you there!

Dr. Daniel Harki is the Northrop Professor at the University of Minnesota and principal investigator (PI) of the Harki laboratory, which focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of small molecules for applications in anticancer and antiviral drug discovery.

Dr. Harki is the Associate Department Head for Research and the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Additionally, Dr. Harki is co-Leader of the Cellular Mechanisms Program at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center.

Dr. Harki is an Associate Editor for Medicinal Research Reviews (Wiley).

Dr. Harki is the Chair of Membership and International Relationships for the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Medicinal Chemistry (MEDI).

Ethan Meirovitz has been a Basic Life Support Instructor and an Emergency Medical Responder since 2013. In that time, he's worked as a contract event medic for hundreds of functions from little league t-ball tournaments, to state high school championships, and even a Zombie Pub Crawl.

In his time as a BLS instructor, he's taught over a thousand people lifesaving skills like CPR, how to use an AED, first aid, and STOP THE BLEED.

Ethan was a Golden Valley Rotarian from 2020-2023 and belonged to a club in Omaha for two years prior.

As Education and Partnerships leader at College Inside Track, Cozy Wittman speaks nationally about college search, educating families, and training financial advisors. College search has become increasingly complex, the nuances hard to understand; Cozy is passionate about dispelling myths that cost families money! She’s been featured in The Journal of Financial Planning on the subject of college planning.

Cozy is excited to connect with organizations and families interested in learning more about the complex college search process. She is a mom of 5 kids with very different goals for college so she is no stranger to the challenges around college search.

Attorney Marshall H. Tanick of the Twin Cities law firm of Meyer Njus Tanick will make his annual presentation to the Rotary Club. He will summarize nine of the most momentous decisions of the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court during its recently concluded 2023-24 term, including freedom of speech, gun safety and ownership, reproductive rights, and, of course, a trio of Trump-related topics and their impact in Minnesota.

This meeting takes place at Minneapolis Marriott West in St. Louis Park in combination with the St. Louis Park Sunrise Club and St. Louis Park Noon Club.

St. Louis Park and Golden Valley Rotary Clubs invite you to join us for this immersive experience. Everyone is welcome.
The eradication of polio is one of Rotary’s longest standing and most significant efforts. Rotary International has helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries. Polio cases have been reduced by 99.9% worldwide and Rotarians won't stop until the disease is gone for good.

The global fight to end polio may seem distant and abstract. However, with the use of virtual reality (VR) technology, this distance can be bridged. Polio's Last Mile, a VR experience developed by REM5 Studios based in St. Louis Park, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is not just an immersive experience. It's a powerful tool that aims to educate, engage, and most importantly, inspire its users to join the fight against polio.
 
Come learn where we’re at in the fight. What’s preventing us from passing the finishing line and eradicating polio globally for good and the work that is being done to ensure we get there. REM 5 will be with us taking us on the journey of The Last Mile, an immersive experience where you will feel the heartbeat of hope, resilience, and unwavering determination of the heroes on the frontlines to end polio once and for all. Featured at Rotary International in Singapore.
 
This event is open to the public. Please join us. The cost of the event is $25 per person. Tickets include a buffet style lunch. Attendees are invited to donate to Rotary's PolioPlus campaign. Currently, donations will be matched 2 to 1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
 
Register soon! Registration closes August 26 or earlier if we reach the room capacity.

Martin Graefe is the senior group director and director of the Concordia Language Training Center. He has been on staff at Concordia Language Villages since 1995, serving eight years as director for year-round programs and ten years as the associate director for operations.

Martin holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota and a master’s degree in business administration from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Martin has been a Rotarian for over 25 years, serving as the club president for Bemidji Rotary in 2012-13. He lives in Bemidji with his wife Lisa. The youngest of their three children spent a year in Stockholm Sweden as a Rotary Youth Exchange Student.

We will use our noon meeting as a service activity and use our Golden Valley Notecards to write letters to:

• Someone you know who could use a note of cheer.
• Someone you know who should become a GV Rotary Club member.
• A child in the hospital.
• Karen, a 91 year old Minnesotan whose family members are all out of state.
• Deployed Troops, Recruit Graduates + Veterans 

We’ll be sure to have writing utensils and a method for mailing the cards out.

Need not be present to “win”; follow the linked guidelines in the newsletter to do this at home. 

This could be done for a whole family to do or a rainy-day activity for little ones with age-appropriate messages and drawings.

Karl Erickson, Youth Programs Manager, Elpis Enterprises

Before joining Elpis as our Woodworking Program Manager in September of 2022, Karl worked as a teacher at Higher Ground Academy in St. Paul, MN. There, he authored and coordinated a “No Child Left Inside” MN DNR grant which helped with nature-based exploration (primarily ice fishing) and maintained partnerships with Tickets 4 Kids, Free Bikes 4 Kids, Ardent Outdoor Group, and Adam Thielen Foundation Charities. These experiential activities empowered students inside and outside of their traditional school days with non/traditional experiences. Other relevant work experiences include being a floral box builder and social media marketer for Wholesale Wicker Baskets, LLC. He is also a two-time Iraq War Veteran who served seven years in the Minnesota Army National Guard.

Morgan Schafer, ReThink Disposable Zero Waste Organizer and Sasha Lewis-Norelle, Environmental Health and Justice Organizer

Morgan received her bachelor's degree in environmental science in 2024 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on social, political, and economic perspectives. She grew up moving across the Midwest, finally landing in London, England before attending college back home. She now works as the Zero Waste Organizer with the ReThink Disposable project to work with local businesses and institutions across Minnesota with the goal of stopping trash before it starts.

Morgan first became interested in advocacy through a program for teens at her local Planned Parenthood, led by the belief that every person is deserving of respect and compassion. Later, during her time at UW Madison, she learned about the strong correlation between social justice and environmental issues and their pervasiveness across the globe. She developed a strong sense of responsibility for protecting the planet and has found a passion for bettering the world, particularly in fields of social justice, climate change, and sustainability.

Morgan is excited to put this passion and experience to work to create a safe, healthy, and beautiful future for our planet and its people, starting here in Minnesota.

Sasha is the Environmental Health and Justice Organizer in Minnesota. He works with local communities and allies to advance environmental justice through education, advocacy, and community organizing.

Sasha graduated from Macalester College in 2021 with a degree in Environmental Studies and a biology emphasis. He grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and has loved nature and the environment since he was young. he has a strong passion for changing our society for the better, particularly around environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability.

Sasha first got involved with environmental advocacy through student activism while attending Macalester. He worked on a campaign to divest the school's endowment from fossil fuels, joined the Sunrise Movement to fight for a Green New Deal, and volunteered with MN350 in the fight to stop the Line 3 Pipeline. Environmental activism and organizing are now his passion, and he's always excited for new opportunities to create a better world.

https://cleanwater.org/

Highway 55 Clean-Up
Thursday, October 10, 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
NE Corner of Hwy 55 and Winnetka Ave.

SIGN UP HERE

The Golden Valley Rotary Club is in its 28th year of caring for our stretch of Highway 55; our work continues on Thursday, October 10! Community members are welcome to join us in this fun and easy project. Dinner at Doolittle's to follow the service project.

Meet at the NE Corner of Hwy 55 and Winnetka Ave.

• Please bring and wear your own gloves.

SIGN UP HERE

Khalique Rogers is a graduate of Gordon Parks High School, St. Paul College, and has been asked to provide featured presentations at conferences not only in Minnesota, but also in other states. Rogers has co-authored columns in the Star Tribune and MinnPost. He’s been asked to testify a number of time at Minnesota legislative committees focused on helping reduce the number of youth and family experiencing homelessness. He personally experienced homelessness as a youngster. He served as the leader of a successful effort to convert a trash-filled vacant lot in St. Paul into a beautiful playground. Rogers has a deep belief in the importance of having young people be present and have opportunities to help shape policy.

Joe Nathan has been an inner city public school aide, teacher, and administrator. He was selected to coordinate a National Governors Association project, Time for Results: the Governors 1991 Report on Education. More than 30 state legislatures and several Congressional Committees have asked him to testify on various education issues. Student, parent, and professional groups have given him awards for his work. Nathan has helped write several major laws, including Post Secondary Enrollment Options and the nation’s first charter public school law. He served as a local PTA president in St. Paul, and a member of the Minnesota State PTA board. He has written two books named “must read” by the American School Board journal, along with a third, and edited a fourth. More than 30 newspapers including Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Atlanta Constitution, and Detroit News have published guest columns he wrote. Nathan has written proposals that generated more than $33 million from a variety of national, regional, and local foundations, government agencies, and companies.

Between 1989 and 2004 he wrote a weekly column carried by three of Minnesota’s four largest daily papers. He now writes a twice-a-month column carried regularly by about 20 suburban and rural Minnesota newspapers. The column also has appeared on local and national websites. Nathan has appeared on more than 400 television and radio programs including “The Today Show”, “Good Morning America”, "McNeil/Lehrer News Hour”, and “All Things Considered”. He earned a B.A. from Carleton, MA and PhD from the University of Minnesota. Nathan has been married for 46 years to a retired St. Paul Public School teacher. The Nathan’s three children all attended and graduated from St. Paul Public Schools.  Their five granddaughters also attend St. Paul Public Schools.

Mayor Kathi Hemken has been a resident of New Hope since 1976. She was elected to her first term as mayor in 2008 and was reelected in 2012, 2016, and 2020. Hemken is a retired production control supervisor at Honeywell. She has a B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota. Hemken’s community involvement includes: New Hope Planning Commission, member and chair; Metropolitan Council Land Use Committee; North Metro Mayors Association (president two years); Hennepin County Active Living; Regional Council of Mayors; Northwest YMCA board member; New Hope Women of Today; League of Women Voters of Crystal, New Hope, and East Plymouth; Ambassador Care Facility Advisory Board; and she’s a volunteer for School District 281. As a member of the board, Mayor Hemken will tell us all about the Quad Communities’ Beyond the Yellow Ribbon.

Beyond The Yellow Ribbon Quad Communities is a grassroots citizen group that engages the communities of Golden Valley, Crystal, New Hope, and Robbinsdale in support of military members, veterans, and their families. It joins nearly 200 Minnesota cities, counties, and businesses already proclaimed Beyond the Yellow Ribbon.

Beyond the Yellow Ribbon is a comprehensive program that creates awareness for the purpose of connecting military service members and their families with community support, training, services, and resources.

October is Rotary International Community Economic Development Month. The Golden Valley Rotary Club celebrates by naming a local Business of the Year to honor. The 2024 selection is Lunds & Byerlys Golden Valley. They will receive their award at the October 29th meeting.

PAST ANNUAL BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS OF THE YEAR

Armstrong, Torseth, Skold and Rydeen (ATS&R) 2006
Courage Center 2007
General Mills 2008
Golden Valley Golf and Country Club 2009
Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery 2010
Golden Valley American Legion, Post 523 2012
Winkley Orthotics and Prosthetics 2013
PRISM 2014
My Music Store 2015
Culver’s of Golden Valley 2016
Animal Humane Society 2017
Tennant Company 2018
Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis 2019
Best Wishes Floral 2020
J-HAP and Cornerstone Creek 2021
Bergstrom Studio 2022
Help At Your Door 2023

William Heathershaw's life was very much focused on community service when he was in college by overextending himself in student organizations. Volunteering for the 2008 Beijing Olympics was his last real volunteer engagement for quite a few years while he lived in Beijing. Then later in the Bay Area as life became much more focused on career. Despite growing up in a lower middle-class situation, William is blessed that he's been provided the opportunities to experience so much in life including traveling to nearly 40 countries on four continents. He's spent most of the past eight years focusing on his own small businesses, though he decided to recently join a decades-old family-owned business in Plymouth within the business technologies industry – their primary offerings are business telecommunications and an emergency management platform for school districts, college campuses, governments, healthcare systems, and large venues. William is also dedicated to promoting the life-changing college and CTE scholarships offered by the Horatio Alger Association, one of the largest private funders of needs-based scholarship – they changed his life in 2004 when he was one of two recipients that year in Iowa for a National Scholarship. For the past five years, William has been alongside his now life partner (wife), Ann, and they have a beautiful and spunky toddler Josie who somehow simultaneously drains and recharges them.

Karen Wojahn was raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Business with a degree in Accounting. She worked in government and public accounting and has actively volunteered with many non-profits, including the Embroiderers’ Guild of America. In her spare time, she enjoys embroidery, traveling, reading, golf, and cross-country skiing. Her love of embroidery has developed over many years.

In April, 2024, Karen and 40 Rotary E-Club Global Travelers and their families/friends went on an amazing trip to Egypt. They combined service and learned about grant opportunities with incredible sight-seeing.