By Andy Meek - The Daily News -

Gwyn Fisher is known among Memphians as a tireless evangelist spreading an increasingly important message: that a city’s destiny is linked to its cultivation and support of young professionals and emerging leaders.

And her attention is not limited to the bounds of the Memphis city limits. Fisher, the executive director of MPACT Memphis – a nonprofit organization focused on young professionals – will later this week head across the Atlantic to the three-day Brussels Forum.

She’ll also represent the British Council Transatlantic Network 2020 (TN2020) at the Young Professionals Summit during the Brussels event.

The Brussels Forum is a gathering of influential political, corporate and intellectual leaders from the U.S. and Europe. It will be held Friday through Sunday. The Young Professionals Summit will be Saturday and will focus on listening to young professionals and engaging them in finding solutions to problems that span international boundaries.

Fisher, who also is part of a young professionals advisory council assembled by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, said she was asked to participate in the Brussels forum because of the grassroots work she’s doing in Memphis and with MPACT to connect young professionals with each other.

That work extends beyond MPACT. Fisher, for example, was seated around the conference room table last year when Luttrell’s transition team delivered to him its report that detailed what some of his immediate objectives should be.

It included the recommendation that Luttrell create a young professionals “kitchen cabinet” to consult with the mayor and keep county government focused on recruiting, retaining and developing young professionals.

Fisher’s Brussels trip comes on the heels of her group’s biggest fundraiser of the year. Earlier this month, MPACT held its second annual Soul of the City Gala, a fundraiser attended by several hundred people that also was a celebration of the work of emerging leaders in a variety of fields.

“What I found working with the (TN2020) program is that many of the ideas and best practices discussed do translate back to Memphis,” Fisher said. “The ideas and opportunities I take away from my interaction can apply to my work here in Memphis and with MPACT.

“Obviously, we’ll be discussing the economic impact of young professionals – the percentage of a city’s population with a four-year degree and how that correlates to just about everything to determine a city’s success.”

In a statement, Robin Davies, the head of the EU Team at the British Council Office in Brussels, called Fisher’s work “innovative, inspirational and engaging.”

Fisher joined MPACT Memphis as executive director in August 2008, following work in the legal field that included serving as a law clerk in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for West Tennessee.

In addition to being a 2008 graduate of Leadership Memphis’ FastTrack Program, she has scooped up several local civic awards and distinctions and is a participant in the TN2020 network, an invitation-only consortium of leading young professionals from North America and Europe.

“One of the topics I’m most excited about is looking at the role of young professionals and the creative class in the recent revolutions in the Middle East,” Fisher said about the upcoming forum, participants of which will include professors, diplomats, writers and CEOs.

Along with analyzing issues surrounding young leaders, topics will include job creation, the rise of China as a global superpower and policies of the West in the Middle East.

“Particularly in Egypt, the revolution began with the same basic issues most revolutions are founded on,” Fisher said. “Lack of job opportunities, a poor economy, food issues, things like that. But what made Egypt so unique was the creative class that drove the revolution through Facebook and Twitter and the kind of interpersonal communications that have never been a part of toppling an international government before.”