I am honored to serve as your International President–and I accept the challenge to lead you to a brighter future and a revitalized association.
My theme for this year is “Building Blocks for Our Future” with the focus on:
- Professional Development;
- Growth; and
- Collaboration
My motto is: Invest in yourself for your professional and personal growth through IAWP.
We are in times of continued change, not only in our association but everywhere you look.
Technology is changing at the speed of light, the employment culture is evolving with the influx of a new generation, the workforce is no longer looking at a job for a career but rather to learn and grow and move to other employment—and that means our jobs are changing!
It is no surprise that we all have to continue moving in the direction of change to keep up!
The IAWP foundation that we built over 100 years ago needs some remodeling as we face declining membership and decreasing attendance at our conferences. We are not alone. Membership organizations across the board are facing similar challenges.
IAWP has addressed these challenges with solid improvements over the last several years to help us sustain the future of our association.
With these changes, we have reinforced our foundation with new building blocks to make our association even stronger. We are seeing the benefits of our labor with a small increase in new members and now is the time to keep building and remodeling our association to reflect the new modern workforce and culture.
How do we make IAWP, the association of choice for our members?
Who are we? Who are our partners?
How do we attract new members?
What makes our association special?
How do we get the message out?
These are all questions we’ll need to address as we develop our blueprint for the future and continue building.
It starts with professional development.
This year I am challenging the board of directors and you to work together to develop new innovative educational topics that are of interest to not only our current members, but topics that will interest and engage new members and partners.
What type of educational offerings can we provide to fully embrace the vision of the Workplace Innovation and Opportunity Act?
How do we engage partners to realize the collaborative culture and teamwork envisioned by WIOA?
We’ll continue the hard work from the last administration—and keep building.
Next it’s about collaboration—and growth.
We have a strong board with solid goals to accomplish this year. We’ll need to work together as a team –this can’t be done by just a few.
Finally it’s about communication—with our members and our partners.
As we evolve and build a stronger foundation for our association, as we remodel our educational offerings and membership value, we need to publicize our successes!
We need to hold an Open House and invite people to see what we’ve done. That means new employees at our workplaces, partners and their peers. Everyone’s invited!
Chapters can all play a role by inviting new people to see the remodel as well. We have a tremendous opportunity to engage partners and others in our association. Let’s take advantage of it!
These building blocks for the future are strong and sturdy.
Thank you for helping me put them in place so our association can stand tall for years to come.
I am excited for Cincinnati, Ohio conference 2018 and hope to see you there!