Twenty-six years ago, Katie Larson was diagnosed with diabetes as a child at Nationwide Children's Hospital, just outside Columbus. This year, one year to the day after passing her CDCES certification, she ran into the very person who had been her educator when she was six years old.
"She inspired me to become a Diabetes Care and Education Specialist and give back to others as much as she gave to me," Katie said.
Nobody scripted that moment, and nobody handed Katie talking points. She was simply given the chance to talk, and what came out was a complete story: a diagnosis, a career built around it, and a reunion that closed the loop.
That's worth sitting with, because it points to something true across every kind of association, not just this one. The story was already fully formed inside Katie long before anyone asked her to share it. She didn't need a special moment to have it. She needed an invitation.
That's the real takeaway for your own community. Your members are carrying stories exactly like this one right now, whether your organization gathers everyone together once a year or stays mostly virtual and never fills a room at all. It doesn't matter what your setting looks like. The instructors, volunteers, longtime members, and quiet advocates in your membership all have some version of Katie's arc: something that shaped them, and a reason they stayed involved. What's usually missing isn't the story. It's the opportunity to be asked for it.
So the useful shift is to stop treating these stories as things you happen to catch, and start treating them as things you go ask for. A simple, direct invitation to a member, sent whenever it makes sense, an anniversary, a career milestone, or just a good week, is often all it takes for someone to hand you exactly the kind of story Katie told.
And that invitation doesn't have to be its own separate ask. Often the easiest place to build it in is a moment your members are already moving through: an application, a registration, a nomination form. They're already telling you something about themselves in that moment. Add one simple prompt inside that existing step, something that invites them to share what shaped them or what your organization has meant to their career, and you're not creating new work for anyone. You're just giving people the chance to say more, right where they already are.
Your members are holding stories like this one right now. We'd love to help you go ask for them.
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