John Rose was awarded the Communication and Leadership Award during the Spring Toastmasters Conference Luncheon on Saturday, May 21 in West Des Moines.
John has been working in the technology industry for many years. He spent 18 years at American Express, 2 years at an incentive company in St. Louis, and the last 7 years at ITA Group, which is where he is currently. He is married and has six children ranging all over the country from Arizona, to North Carolina, to Alaska. He is able to video call with them each week and stay caught up with their lives.
John is a board member for Junior Achievement of Central Iowa. He served on the United Way Campaign Cabinet in 2014 and headed the ITA Group campaign the past six years. He volunteered with the Graduation walk with United Way which is a program to help kids who are at risk of not graduating High School. Before moving to Iowa, he was on the Treehouse Children’s Museum board in Ogden, Utah and participated in their capital campaign to build a new facility.
John is passionate about educating youth. Financial literacy is key to their success, which is why he likes helping out with Jr. Achievement. Family is also very important to him. When his kids were growing up “hate” was never allowed to be said. Also reading was extremely important to him along with music education.
In Utah John helped Boy Scouts both at a troop and an organizational level. Church is a place where he has done some work as a bishop and has addressed a crowd of over a thousand. He has also been the executive secretary for a good part of the state for his church. He was on the board of Jr. Achievers and served on the stock market challenge committee, one of their two major fund-raisers each year.
John has helped to teach a 5 week session for the past 6 years to 4th graders on resources: natural, human, and capital. He enjoys teaching youth how they can be entrepreneurial. He has also helped in his church as part of the lay leadership, which involves regularly speaking to congregations.
John helped his team win the stock market challenge. He has also won Top CIO about nine years ago that was handed out by Computer World.
John says, “Youth is our future,” which is why John has a passion for helping the youth in our community. He speaks at conferences 2 times a year for his church, participates in Zoo clean up, Meals from the Heartland, and trash bash. He truly has a passion for giving back to our community and making it a great place to live, work, and play.