More to the “Y” than Meets the Eye — George Leis, Suzanne McCormick, the YMCA, and the Pope

George Leis is Montecito Bank & Trust’s President & Chief Operating Officer, a familiar presence in the Village – and a famously nice guy. Once described in these pages as “…so upbeat, ordinary bankers shrink from his presence like goblins nearing sunlight,” Leis is a dedicated and indefatigable volunteer for the community he loves. In both his banking career and volunteer work, he has demonstrated a genuine, lifelong heart for service. Okay. But an audience with the Pope?! 

“This came together during George’s first week on the job,” says Suzanne McCormick, President and CEO of YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) and orchestrator of the papal convocation. She and Leis will be meeting with Pope Francis in April. McCormick was at pains to give the newly-arrived Leis a little context. “I told him,” she says in perfect deadpan, ‘George, I don’t know if you should expect an invitation like this every week.’” 

The first week on the job to which McCormick refers is Leis’ election this past February to Chair of Y-USA’s board. In George Leis’ lifetime of intentional service, this may be fairly described as a zenith. In September of 2021, Suzanne McCormick became the organization’s 15th President, and is the first woman to lead the YMCA in the association’s 180-year history. 

In the U.S., the YMCA brand is as familiar and embraceable as your favorite weighted blankie – a cozy and welcoming nexus of youth sports, afterschool programs, summer camps, feverishly polished basketball and racquetball courts, and workout facilities that welcome you and your un-ironed, voluminous gym shorts. The well-worn phrase “I gotta get back to the Y” – guiltily uttered by popcorn-quaffing couch potatoes for decades – is as central to the warm American zeitgeist as e plubibus unum. The YMCA is a cherished hometown emblem of community and acceptance. 

“Le të shkojmë në Y”

The Y also happens to be a global steamroller of healing and uplift. “There are Ys in 120 countries,” McCormick says. “I just recently had the opportunity to visit the YMCA in Kosovo, and there it’s doing a lot of bridge-building and peacebuilding between young Kosovars and Serbian youth.” Yes, there is a YMCA in Kosovo – a word once synonymous with bloody strife and a ruinous internecine war with Serbia. “In other countries,” McCormick says, “All these YMCAs are focused on the social needs of their respective countries and communities.” 

There is joy and awe in this idea – a complex, bruised, and many-gabled world connected by its network of YMCAs, of all things. “Let’s head over to the Y” is a phrase spoken in a mad variety of languages, and from Anaheim to Zimbabwe. Yeah, the YMCA is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit social services organization. But don’t let that glamorous designation bedazzle. The Y is the sum of its hearts, to our common benefit – a complex enterprise whose innumerable gears turn with one consolidating, empathetic purpose. George and Suzanne exemplify the mission, and their confluence at Y-USA’s home office is auspicious. 

Leis – a banker – is bringing his ‘A game’ to the national board. “I’m uniquely placed to help those Ys that aren’t thriving by reaching out to both the volunteers and the CEO, because I can see the financials. I can offer ideas on how you might change up some things and be financially successful. Because if you’re financially successful, you can continue to serve your community, which is what we’re all about.” 

McCormick remarks on the timeliness of Leis’ arrival. “We need to overlay that higher level of business acumen George provides with the way our Ys are operating. That’s what I’m excited about over the next couple years – how George and I are going to partner to continue to not only grow the movement but make it work better.” 

Deer Park and Thailand 

At 6 or 7 years old, Leis learned to swim at the YMCA in Deer Park, Long Island; a childhood baptism in the org to whose board he was recently elected national chair. As full circles go, this one is so sweet even the achingly sentimental might find the sugar content alarming. Leis, though, is firing on all pistons. “This is a bucket list opportunity for me. All of our YMCAs across the United States are led by volunteers, and as Chair, I really want the signature theme of my role to be a real connection with those volunteers.” 

Suzanne McCormick comes to her high office with Y-USA from outside the YMCA organization. “Two of my predecessors have spent their whole careers in the YMCA. I am an anomaly in that. I never worked for the YMCA until this job. I do think the organization was ready for more outside perspective.” Graduating from Duke University with a degree in Political Science, McCormick dove straight into the Peace Corps, which dovetailed with the young firebrand’s righteous determination to right wrongs. “My major was more a study in social justice. This is prior to apartheid ending, and I wrote my senior thesis on the African National Congress’ resistance movement.” Imagining herself assigned by the corps to S. Africa, they posted her to Thailand instead. Her two years there were transformative. “That experience solidified for me the inescapable fact that service was my path.” 

A nonprofit executive for some 30 years, much of that time spent with the United Way, McCormick’s positive momentum recently drew the inevitable attention of Forbes, as happens to those whose actionable passions change the weather. Forbes named McCormick to its 50 Over 50 List in the Impact category in 2023. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 The NonProfit Times recognized Suzanne in its annual celebration of the nonprofit sector’s top executives and strategists. 

Papal for the People

In April, George Leis and Suzanne McCormick will have a 30-minute audience with the Pope. Yes, that Pope. The Y is famously a place to meet your neighbors. Did they bump into His Holiness in the weight room? “We’ve worked a lot to develop the YMCA in Brazil,” McCormick says, “which is doing phenomenal work for young kids in poor communities. Officers of Brazil’s Y made this request of the Pope on their and our behalf.” Leis will arrive bearing a message. “I’m quite close with the friars at the mission, and of course they’re super excited. They’re putting together a handwritten book from the mission as a gift from Santa Barbara to the Pope that I’m going to deliver. I feel very, very honored.” 

“George and I are joining the board chair and the leader of the Porto Alegre YMCA,” McCormick says. “They invited George and I to come and represent the United States and – really, the rest of the world.” No pressure. 

Bottom line? The YMCA is the beating heart of any community that hosts it; not the metaphorical beating heart, the other one; the hard-working pump that assures all the precincts of the body are oxygenated. Yeah, the Y will always be a place to make broken, gasping conversation with your neighbor as you try to avoid being hurled off your treadmill. But the Y has always been, and remains, something else again. 

“The fact that we’re all members of the Y,” Leis says, “that connection cuts through politics, it cuts through religion, it stands for something. No matter where the YMCA is in the world, you can count on it serving the community in a way that the community absolutely needs.” McCormick concurs. The YMCA does turn up in unexpected places. 

“There is a beautiful Y called the Jerusalem International YMCA,” McCormick says. “It’s right outside the holy city of Jerusalem, across the street from the King David Hotel. There are scriptures from the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah on the building, and there is a child development center there where they have children of all faiths…” Suzanne McCormick pauses. Some wonders defy articulation. “It’s an
extraordinary thing.”