Meet Our Alumni

Christopher Fan
Emerging Leaders 2020F | Leadership St. Louis 2023-24

What impact has your FOCUS experience had on your life? The Emerging Leaders program really helped me find my voice and find the confidence in my voice as a leader but also just as a person. I don’t think everyone who enters leadership initially is given that kind of opportunity or mentorship in their sectors or their organizations where they are allowed to find their voice, and Emerging Leaders helps with that.

When coming into Leadership St. Louis, I already knew what my voice was but had to embrace the humility of understanding that my voice is one of many and learn how to create that collective impact as opposed to individual impact. The next piece is, once you’ve stepped into your power, what are you going to do with it? Are you just talking about it, or are you doing it? At the end of the day, if St. Louis doesn’t become what I wanted it to be that’s on me in many ways. Did I use my voice, my social capital, my internal power in my organization? I left FOCUS with a deep sense of civic accountability. I think there’s a lot of healing needed in St. Louis and if you can find ways to help St. Louis heal you are going to see a lot of incredible change.

What did FOCUS mean for you as someone not originally from the region? No matter how many years they live in St. Louis, there is this interesting divide of the people who are not from St. Louis and the rest of St. Louis who’ve all known each other because of school,  because of families, because of lived experience. One of the biggest and first impacts of Leadership St. Louis was that real and imagined wall broke down pretty quickly. Once you get past the initial phase of whether or not they’re from St. Louis, there are a lot of things to share and a lot of connections to make and relationships to build.

What would you say to someone who was considering applying for a FOCUS program? If someone was on the fence about applying, I would tell them to just do it! For those getting ready to go through a program, I have three bits of advice. The first is to get to know everyone. Take the time to meet the people who sat on the far side of the room, those you think you may have nothing in common with. Meet them, get to know them, respect who they are and embrace who they are as vital to the St. Louis region. The second tip is come in with the confidence of what you know and the humility of what you don’t know is a lot. Finally, enjoy every moment. Embrace those moments when you are going to be with your peers and you are going to learn something so deeply powerful about this region and just let all the other things go for a moment.

In what ways have you stayed involved with FOCUS following graduation? It’s not always easy, but I still try to keep in contact with as many people as I can from my programs. When I get an invitation from FOCUS to be part of something, it’s really hard for me to say no given not only what FOCUS has given me in my personal and professional journey but also the accountability I carry with me from my program experience.