Names in the News: Tianyi Joe Zhu, Naperville Jaycess

Name and Position: Tianyi Joe Zhu, president of Naperville Jaycees.

What are some of the responsibilities you have with the Naperville Jaycees?

Essentially what I do is help manage the organization. I have my officers that I help manage and I have the board that I run and I also run the general membership meetings. I also tend to take the role of certainly just managing the overall culture and driving the organization and making major decisions, which have to be made on behalf of the organization.

In your opinion, why is the Naperville Jaycees important to the community?

It's incredibly important. The Naperville Jaycees, from what I understand, has been around since I believe 1955, and our mission is to be a community development and leadership service. I could argue to the fact that, since our involvement with the city of Naperville, we have developed leaders for basically the past 57 years. And I could argue that nearly every major [Naperville] non-for-profit board, city commission, park district and school board has the presence of a current or former Naperville Jaycee, and that is really a cultivation of leaders in our community. Very often people enter the Naperville Jaycees, they are there for five, maybe eight years, and they go on to something else. But their leadership experiences that they took on from the Jaycees are almost a stepping-stone for bigger and better things, not only community-wise, but also professionally. Our major role is a fundraiser, obviously we run the Last Fling and we run a number of other fundraisers around the community. We've donated over $2 million to the community throughout the past decade. Outside of that we run a number of philanthropy events, we partner with Loaves and Fishes every year, we partner with Rebuild Together Aurora to help rebuild houses, we partner with District 204 every year. And this past year we've helped 140 children get Christmas presents that otherwise wouldn't have due to family financial circumstances. 

Can you describe what being involved with Naperville Jaycees means to you?

I think for one, being at the helm of the organization and getting to help so many people is a very, very good feeling being able to make those decisions that often impact thousands of lives. And certainly the leadership experience. I myself have my own start-up and from a career standpoint being a young leader, not only communicating with city officials, but also being able to manage an organization of over 200 members is very interesting because you can't manage, you really have to lead.