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Lead, Inspire, and Motivate

The other night I had the opportunity to hear Carolyn Linn, candidate for first selectman, share an experience she had as an Aetna employee. My immediate thought, upon hearing this, was, “This is the skill set a Chester first selectman should have!”

During her tenure as a manager at Aetna, Carolyn was elected to the position of president of the Aetna Employee Club—a 75 year-old organization. This is a volunteer position that requires a significant amount of work and she executed the duties of the position while still fulfilling her requisite managerial job expectations. In this role, she was responsible for leading 14 board members and 90 volunteers in supporting 11,000 employee members. Before taking the presidential office, Carolyn was informed by Aetna’s Human Resources (HR) department, that the six figure budget for the club was being cut by $150,000 and that the membership model would be changing from paid to a free employee benefit. Additionally, she was tasked with opening two sister employee organizations.

Carolyn took this news as an opportunity and openly communicated the significant changes to her team. The model change eliminated any chance to build the club’s financial base, but this didn’t stop her. She was able to successfully lead, inspire, and motivate this group to effectively roll out 350 events across the country and organize and open two additional clubs without any managerial, financial, or organizational influence over these board members and volunteers.

This exceeded the expectations of both the HR department and the CEO of Aetna. The similarities between the structure of the Aetna Employee Club and our town government is uncanny. If Carolyn can lead volunteers to unprecedented success, just imagine what she could do as an elected first selectman. I fully support candidate Carolyn Linn as Chester’s next first selectman.

Meredith Devanney

Chester