November Volunteer of the Month: Jim Young

IHCA Board of Directors

This month, it is my pleasure to present Jim Young as November’s Issaquah Highlands Volunteer of the Month. As the Issaquah Highlands Community Association (IHCA) board president, Jim collaborates with me, other IHCA board members, and IHCA committees with the greatest leadership and professionalism.

Issaquah Highlands is an amazing community and a lot of planning and managing is done behind-the-scenes. The IHCA’s responsibilities can be challenging, but the beauty of this community shines through in all we do. Moving into the future, there will be new challenges and I feel confident our dedicated volunteers will rise to the challenge and ensure the success of this community for generations to come.

— Sarah Hoey, IHCA Executive Director

Like many of my fellow residents, I really like living in Issaquah Highlands. I will always remember the snow and power outage on our move-in day in December 2006.

I was a Certified Professional Accountant for over 30 years with a large international accounting firm, so it was a natural fit for me to join the IHCA Finance Committee. I joined in September 2010 and became committee chair in early 2011. It was at that time I started to attend IHCA Board of Directors meetings.

I served on the search committee in 2011 to find our first executive director for the IHCA. Issaquah Highlands master developer, Port Blakely, was in the process of transitioning the responsibility of maintaining our community to the IHCA. This was a national search, which afforded me the opportunity to see how special, unique, and diverse our community is in so many ways.

In July 2012, Port Blakely asked me to become president of the IHCA board. Since then, the board has asked me to continue as board president each year, over multiple terms on the board. (IHCA board members serve two-year terms. My current term ends on June 30, 2021.)

I also chaired the search committee for our current executive director, Sarah Hoey. It has been extremely rewarding to work with her over the past five years. With her leadership, the IHCA board has accomplished many goals, including opening our first maintenance facility and this year’s move to our new office on Park Drive. Sarah has built a strong team, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this year with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sarah and her team did not miss a beat and our board has become very proficient with Zoom.

Outside of volunteering with the IHCA, I keep busy walking around the many options we have in Issaquah Highlands, as well as serving on other nonprofit boards, including Virginia Mason Memorial Hospital in Yakama. I also love to travel and was lucky to take several trips this year before the pandemic.

Photos: (left) Volunteer of the Month and IHCA Board of Directors President Jim Young; (right) Jim (left) with Ben Rush, IHCA Board of Directors member, and Sarah Hoey, IHCA executive director. 

As published in November 2020 Connections >>