Her Story
About Lorinda
I serve as State Administrator for a youth nonprofit shooting sports organization in Alaska, a role I've held for 20 years. My work involves administrating competitions, managing membership, coordinating coaching staff and athletes, and managing the organization's funds. What we do is truly about youth development - we run a shooting organization where kids shoot shotguns, and through this program they gain positive character traits such as self-reliance, responsibility, integrity, and accountability. It requires a high level of responsibility, accountability, and attention to detail. We've had well over 1,000 kids go through the program in 20 years, and that's the most important part of what we do - having a positive influence on these kids. The program started when my husband wanted to train kids to shoot Clay Target Sports. We began with just 5 or 6 kids on a field, and it eventually grew into over 200 kids and 75 volunteers across the state with more than 15 teams. We would travel around the state to small towns, find gun clubs that might not have been used in 20 years, hold an open house, find somebody to act as a coach, and set up a team. About a year in, my husband came to me and said if I didn't help him with this, it would all fall apart, because while he was good at coaching, the administration, paperwork, organizing competitions, and communicating with parents was completely out of his realm. Between the two of us, we managed to build a pretty amazing program. Four years ago we acquired 200 acres for a training facility, and I serve as executive director of that as well. We currently have 15 active teams across the state, managing coaches from all over Alaska, some well over a thousand miles away. My current priority is recruiting volunteers and training them in what I do, because I'm not immortal. It's important to my husband and me that we are able to pass the baton, and that when that happens, there will be a seamless transition so the program will continue not just to succeed, but to excel, to grow and to be better than when we left.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lorinda
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The strongest advice I ever received was to keep things positive. Even when there's a lot of negatives going on, or there's drama, or something happens and it's out of your control, the one thing I have learned to live by is to keep it positive. Out of that, we started a motto that was 'promote the positive.' We tell the parents and the athletes to always find the positive in something, rather than running around and grumbling. The year after we started Promote the Positive, it came to our attention that there was a lack of gratitude on the part of athletes towards their coaching staff and even towards their parents, who sacrifice a great deal to make sure they make it to practices, that their fees are paid, that they're equipped with what they need to succeed in the program. So we started this motto called Practice Gratitude. What we tell the kids is it's not enough to say thank you. Practice gratitude means your parents took you to practice, you need to take out the trash without being asked, you need to empty the dishwasher without being asked, you need to finish your homework without being asked. That is the best gift, the best thank you you can give your parents - to physically do something. It's easy to say words, it's not the same as the commitment somebody just made to you. The popular saying these days is pay it forward, but this is what we tell the kids: practice gratitude.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.