A new statewide organization should help young North Dakotans establish business contacts among their peers, organizers believe.

The North Dakota Young Professionals is intended to link existing local groups, encourage the formation of new ones and help young people in rural areas, where meeting business peers may be more difficult, said Catherine Dalzell, its statewide coordinator.

Members of the group held a news conference Thursday with Gov. John Hoeven and Shane Goettle, director of the state Department of Commerce, as part of a state meeting on work force recruitment.

Trina Michels, a Napoleon native who recently moved to Fargo from St. Cloud, Minn., said local young professionals' groups make it easier to meet potential business contacts in the same age group. Michels, 23, is a credit analyst at CornerStone Bank in Fargo.

Michels said she often found attending Chamber of Commerce meetings in St. Cloud "intimidating," because members were typically top executives in their companies.

"I really feel that the Young Professionals provides a bridge going from college student to professional, and offers just another steppingstone to start developing those contacts," she said.

She even used a contact she found through Fargo's group to help her mother get a job after her parents sold the family farm, Michels said.

"It's just been great to be able to meet people, and to know more of the other businesses throughout Fargo," she said.

North Dakota has young professionals' groups in Bismarck and Mandan, Fargo, Grand Forks and Jamestown, and newly formed groups in Minot, Dickinson and Carrington. They now have about 850 members.

Ben Zeltinger, a Bismarck architect who is active in the Bismarck-Mandan Young Professionals group, said a statewide group may help encourage more local groups to form.

"It helps people in other cities to get from an idea to an actual, up-and-running network," Zeltinger said.

After he graduated from North Dakota State University in 2002, he worked in Sacramento, Calif., Zeltinger said. Sacramento was "just where I lived and worked. I didn't really have any connection to anything," he said.

When he moved to Bismarck two years later, he joined the local young professionals' network, and it helped him to become "a lot more grounded," he said.

"It has gotten me involved in different organizations, different aspects of the city," he said. "As a result of that, I think Bismarck has really more become home, and a place that I'm more likely to stay."