New TCYP Blogger - Mo Stych

Greetings! Welcome to the Traverse City Young Professionals blog, which John Stocki (also an awesome name) and I recently inherited from Meaghan. Our goal is not to blab about ourselves but to bring to you a wide scope of the Traverse City area from the perspectives of many different people exploring, dining, creating, hiking, swimming, biking, networking, playing, living and growing in this place we all call home. John and I are happy to host these viewpoints and compile them here for the world to see and ogle over. Expect lots of great things moving forward! 

But, just to give you a sense of who I am, I'm going to take a moment to blab about myself. I promise this is the only time!

I was raised but not born in TC. My family moved up here from Hyde Park, IL when I was 3, and I've hardly left since then. I made my first friends, first sandcastles, and first face-plant downhill skiing in this area. I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in History of Art and moved back home to start a life of my own in the town I grew up in, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Still, I was lucky to find a boy (who I'm marrying in September of this year) that is also from TC and wanted to start a life here, too, so together we are navigating these grounds and building our own world in the town we think we know. Turns out this small town keeps getting bigger, and that's not a bad thing at all.

I work in Marketing | Communications at Northwestern Bank and love experimenting with visual design, namely typography. You'll find me outdoors every spare second I have--when I'm not lost in a good book, making up recipes in my much-too-tiny kitchen, traveling around when I can afford it, or thinking of the next goal I want to accomplish.

I am a proud vegetarian and tree-hugger. I dream of the day I can have my own yard with chickens, ducks, and dogs running around in it, and I work hard to make that dream a reality. I also LOVE giraffes.

Enough about me...let's talk about you!

Hopefully you were drawn here because you're interested in the TCYP. Well, you're in luck, because we are always looking for people like you (and if you're in the TCYP already, then you know we like people like you). If you want to  learn about job opportunities in the area, make new friends and expand your business networking reach while having a great time, then you've found the right community.

For more information about the TCYPs, come to our monthly meetings (the third Thursday of every month, 8 a.m. at the TC Chamber building downtown) or visit our website and Facebook page. The video, below, also explains what the TCYP lifestyle is all about.

We would love for you to be apart of it.


- Mo

New TCYP Blogger - John Stocki

Hey there folks,

As you may have heard/read, I am lucky enough to be one of the new bloggers for the Traverse City Young Professionals along with Mo Stych (Sweet name btw). So for the next year or so, you’ll be able to listen to my ramblings and general non-sense about all the cool things to do in Traverse City.

A little about myself to start though… 27/M/Traverse City (AOL throwback lingo). I’ve been living & working overseas since graduating from Grand Valley State University in 2007, including Australia (1 year), United Arab Emirates (3 years), and China (1 year). I decided to move back to the US to be closer to family and friends, and to have a better work/life balance. I grew up in a small town around an hour south of TC, (Brethren) and am very happy to have the time to enjoy all the amazing activities that TC and the surrounding areas provide. I really enjoy hunting and fishing, yet appreciate good wine and cheeses just as much. Cooking & entertaining is a big passion of mine and love making a big mess in my kitchen. I also enjoy exploring all of the different and equally amazing restaurants we have in this area (a true foodie destination). I’m an avid photographer and really am happy when I’m behind the camera and get that really great shot. One day, I hope to take photography further into the professional realm, but we’ll see how that goes.

During the day I’m the Digital Marketing Specialist at the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau (mouthful, I know). At night, I also own my own marketing consulting company and also design e-learning programs. Other than that, I try to be outside as much as possible and enjoy as many activities as I can during each and every season!

So now for some cool stuff, check out some photos of me doing random things.

You want to be a guest blogger and share more cool things about Traverse City you say? I do declare (in the voice of an old southern man) that we should chat about this. I don’t really want to write every single blog post, because that would just be boring. So the more the merrier. Email tcyp@tcchamber.org and we’ll figure it out! Great. Super. Awesome. Fantastic.

Did do like this blog post? If so, you should click share and all that stuff. Let’s show everyone how sweet TC is and get some more amazingly talented people to come here!

Stay tuned for Mo's intro blog post real soon!

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight.

I am ready to admit it: I am comfortable enough in Traverse City to start referring to myself as a member of the Traverse City community. While Florida still has a huge part of my heart, Traverse City is now somewhere that I can call my home. I've adjusted. I've accepted that I will be grocery shopping at Meijer instead of at Publix (aka the world's best grocery store chain). I automatically leave my apartment 3-5 minutes early in winter because I realize that I will need to remove the snow/ice from my car before attempting to drive to work. I know the drink & food specials at local restaurants and I can even give out of towners advice as to where they can chow down on the best local grub.

With that said, it is time to pass the TCYP Blog onto some fresh faces. My story has been told and it is time to introduce you to some other pretty fantastic members of our community and let them tell you how they came to live here and how they are adjusting. I'm sure that they will have plenty to say as far as the goings-on of Traverse City, their new experiences, as well as new TCYP events that occur.

We will still be featuring a guest blogger the first Wednesday of each month, but your new regular bloggers will be John Stocki and Mo Stych, who will be introducing themselves next week. I'll miss my weekly blogs and having the chance to explain the differences in lifestyles between Michigan and Florida (and mention how much snow throws me off guard...often), but I'm excited for you to have the opportunity to get to know some new TCYPs.

Besides, you can always catch me at Business After Hours...or Half-price sushi Tuesday at Firefly.