Inside Saturday, March 8’s edition of The Valley Times-News is our first Twenty Under Forty magazine.

The magazine honors 20 men and women under 40 years old for the contributions they are making in our community. Trust us when we say it was no easy task to narrow the field down to 20.

We appreciate everyone in the community who took the time to make a nomination and to provide information on someone they felt was worthy of the list.

The 20 people honored hold different professions, such as attorney, teacher or leading a nonprofit. All of them have different stories and various reasons for the career field they chose. They’ve also all taken different paths to Chambers County.

However, they share many similar traits.

First, all of them are off to great starts in their career field of choice. Regardless of what they do, all 20 are making a difference in the lives of people in Valley, Lanett, West Point or LaFayette every day.

All of them also share similar characteristics, such as leadership qualities. All care greatly about this area and want to do their part to make Chambers County a better place to live.

We appreciated the opportunity to sit down and interview each of the 20, and we hope you’ll enjoy reading about them too.

And if you know someone you believe should be in the magazine, please keep them in mind for next year. We plan for Twenty Under Forty to become an annual deal, and community involvement is a large part of the reason why the honor means as much as it does.