The odds of starting at the bottom of the barrel and reaching the executive level in a company are pretty slim. The chance of moving up the career ladder in the company where you first launched your career is even less likely.
But Brian Bergeson, 51, has done just that.
Bergeson is the new executive director at the Farmington Valley YMCA in Granby, the eighth YMCA branch Bergeson has worked at since graduating from college.
“With all the jobs I’ve had, it allows me to relate to the staff I lead here,” Bergeson said. “The positions they are doing I have done and I understand. It helps me direct with that perspective.”
Bergeson was born in Ohio, but traveled throughout his childhood with a father involved in government. After graduating with a degree in recreation administration from the University of Maryland in 1979, he saw a job ad for a counseling position at a YMCA in Bethesda.
“I worked with middle school and high school kids to get them involved in rec programs,” Bergeson said. “There was a counseling component through the activities we were doing. We got them outdoors and taught these troubled kids how to be junior leaders of the younger group.”
After five years of counseling, Bergeson looked to take on a management role. His first supervisory position was at an Arlington, Va. branch where he served as its youth and aquatics director, as well as its director of health enhancement for adult programs.
It was an experience that led Bergeson to an opportunity to be second-in-command as associate executive at Chicago-based YMCA of the USA, the national resource office for the nation’s 2,663 YMCAs.
Bergeson’s responsibility extends to overseeing the executive directors at both the West and East Hartford YMCAs, balancing the budget and energizing the staff.
Bergeson recently donned a costume for the Halloween at the Y party and greeted excited kids and their families. “We must continue to put an average face on the YMCA every day.”
Emily Boisvert is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.
