A Conversation With ... Travis Rubelee

You joined the Ozark Trails Council this summer. Tell me about your career in Scouting and why you were interested in coming to Springfield.
I’ve worked for the Boy Scouts for 22 years. This is move No. 7. So, started my career in Dallas, Texas; was an executive there for two and a half years. Moved to Lubbock, Texas, where I was there for five and a half years as an assistant Scout executive. Moved to Tyler, Texas, in east Texas, to be a development director and was there three years. Moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, was there for two years as an assistant Scout executive or chief operating officer. Then moved back to Dallas to work in our national organization as the associate national director of the Order of the Arrow, which is an honor camp program. Then moved to Kansas City, was the chief operating officer for five and a half years through the pandemic and COVID. I took this opportunity three and a half months ago. It just was a logical step. It’s a beautiful place to live, beautiful place to raise a family.

What are your goals for the organization? You’re coming in at a time of change in terms of the properties managed. There was a large property in Joplin that was sold last year that was previously under this council’s jurisdiction. Do you anticipate other operational changes?
I would love to revitalize our camping programs. We’ve got our main Scout camp out in Marshfield. Arrowhead’s been there since 1924. I would love to put some more capital into that to enhance our program, to increase the viability of our summer camp operations and turn it more into year-round operations for us. One of my big goals is to increase the size of our membership, to let people know that Scouting is still around through the Scouts BSA program, grades six to 12. We’ve got our Cub Scout program from kindergarten all the way up to fifth grade. Under the Scouting umbrella, we also give kids an opportunity to have an exploratory opportunity for a potential career. We’ve got 3,600 kids registered in the Ozark Trails Council, but we’ve got a potential available youth of half a million.

Let’s talk more about that Exploring career shadowing program. How does that program engage with businesses, and what are some of the skills that the organization is hoping to develop in participants through the program?
The first thing I do when I talk to a business leader here in our community, I ask them two simple questions: What is your most valuable asset? And 9 times out of 10, they’re going to say, well, our people. So, if it’s your people, what if I gave you a tailor-made program that we plan everything out, we insure the kids, it gives you an opportunity to start them at 14 years old to where they can have job shadowing, internship throughout their high school experience. Because not every kid’s going to go to college once they graduate high school, whether it be somebody that wants to learn automotive maintenance, or they want to be a carpenter, they want to be a plumber, they might want to be a doctor one day. It could be aviation, it could be engineering, it could be medical, law, police, fire, government, hospitality. In talking to folks in this community, when I mentioned Exploring, they know that’s with CoxHealth. They’re one of our sponsors, and they adopted the program for their own to where they can get kids that are potentially interested in the medical profession.

What other employers or organizations are a part of the program?
We are starting up with the Greene County Sheriff’s Department. So, Sheriff [Jim] Arnott, he is going to start our program back up, that went away during the pandemic. I know there are some other ones that are right on the cusp of starting. My goal is to work directly with our school system. 

Is there a cost to participate?
Really, the cost is they register the adult leaders that are going to be running the program within their organization. It’s $50 for that. Kids join the program, it’s $50. We run a criminal background check. We train the folks; we make sure that they’ve got the resources necessary in order to run their own program. It gives them that opportunity to say we’re going to start planting the seeds, planting the ground, and we’re going to continue to harvest as we go along. And once a kid graduates high school or graduates college, they already know their work ethic, their character, their integrity. And so, they’re more apt to give that person a job, to keep them local. To say, we can grow our organization by starting with a high-school-age kid and building that relationship with them. It gives those kids that first exposure to a potential future career.

On the national level, Boy Scouts of America announced it is changing its name to Scouting America to reflect a more inclusive organization. It’s also a rebrand amid an image crisis in recent years with allegations of abuse. Is Scouting a safe place for kids? And how will that move toward inclusion of all kids impact local operations?
It’s never been safer to be a Scout. We have a robust criminal background check. We have youth protection training, which tells the volunteers what they can and can’t do with kids. We have two-deep leadership. All of those things are put in place as safeguards to protect our kids. On the inclusivity, Scouting opened its doors to families in 2017 with the addition of young ladies to be in our Cub Scout age program, our elementary school program. My daughter was one of the first ones that signed up. And it gave them the opportunity to join Scouts BSA. There’s still single-gender troops; they don’t go camping together. We’ve got about 20% of our membership is female, which is awesome. We go all the way out to Pittsburgh and all the way east to the Rolla area, and we cover West Plains, as well. It’s a great opportunity because young women have that need and that desire and that want to go out and do the stuff that the boys get to do. And frankly, a lot of the girls do it better. Now Scouting America, that is the brand change that’s going to happen in February of 2025. We’re going to be known locally as Ozark Trails Council Scouting America.