Education goes beyond the classroom—it transforms careers and creates lasting connections.

CFTEA Board Member Mary Swift from Kennebunk Savings Bank shares a powerful story about how a simple Written Communication course helped a colleague earn a promotion and how CFTEA training continues to shape workplace conversations years later. You never know when the impact of CFTEA will present itself.

One day I was in the grocery store when I bumped into a fellow employee. This employee had recently been promoted. I congratulated her on her new job. She smiled and said, “It’s thanks to you that I got promoted.” I was surprised to hear this. She had advanced to a position in commercial lending, something I know little about. It was then that she explained to me what she meant. The prior year I had taught Written Communication in-house through CFTEA and she had been my student. As she was working towards her career goals, she wanted to improve her business writing, which was imperative in the role she was seeking. She viewed the class as an important stepping stone to achieving her objectives. It’s incredibly gratifying to realize that you have helped someone achieve their career goals.

The content that CFTEA offers, and the support that it provides to instructors, like me, has a lasting and profound impact, not only on the employee receiving the education, but on their coworkers and customers who benefit directly and indirectly from that education. A few years later I was running a training session at my company when my ears picked up the name “Buttercup”. I realized that two employees were discussing what Buttercup would do in a certain situation. I smiled to myself as I knew exactly what they were talking about. As part of the Written Communication course I base many of our writing activities around a fictional bank with several different employees, including one named Buttercup. The employees that were pondering what Buttercup might do had taken my class several years prior. It struck me that even a few years out they were still talking about the class, and further still it had given them a common language. This wasn’t just because Buttercup was an amusing character to write business communication about. It once again returns to the power of CFTEA and its ability to translate education and opportunity to the real world.

There are probably countless stories like this. Moments big and small, lives and careers impacted again and again by CFTEA and the wealth of knowledge, opportunity, and experience that it brings to the lives it touches.

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