There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Michael Hamamoto took the podium at the final networking event of the Financial & Insurance Conference Planners Education Forum, held at The Broadmoor in June. Michael, then a high-school senior (now an incoming freshman at Stanford University) and the winner of the 2008 Boys & Girls Club of the Pikes Peak Region Youth of the Year Award, spoke of enduring personal hardships that included his mother’s struggle with cancer. Through it all, he always maintained hope and believed he could accomplish anything.

Sponsored by the Reader’s Digest Foundation since 1947, the Youth of the Year Program chooses state, regional, and then a national winner from clubs around the country; the top prize is a $15,000 scholarship and a chance to meet the President of the United States.

At the auction that followed Michael’s speech, Forum attendees raised $2,000 for the local charity. In a stroke of genius, the evening’s emcee and FICP vice president, education, Kim Boriin, awarded Michael the auction’s grand prize, a four-night hotel stay and two roundtrip air tickets to Colorado Springs from anywhere in the country. “This way,” Boriin told him, “you can use the tickets to get back and forth from college.”

The benefit kicked off with an afternoon of mini-golf where attendees played with other children from the Boys & Girls Club. Attendees also brought donations of non-perishable food items to the Forum, which were placed in 200 backpacks given to the Boys & Girls Club.

The FICP Education Forum drew 165 planners and suppliers for two days of learning and networking. Next up is FICP's Annual Conference, set for November 15 to 18 in Toronto. Click here to see the full agenda.