President's Message – August 2009

I am honored that you have entrusted the leadership of this chapter to me once again. Because our past president, Sarah Ward, has been working very diligently and closely with me since April, the transition from her guardianship to mine has been an easy one. So, I thank her greatly for that.

We have a notable board of directors with Jim Govoni remaining on as our faithful VP of Finance. We have new face joining us as VP of Administration, Sophia Tade. Sophia is striving to break into our profession, and brings a very impressive resume including a background in international business law and global diversity strategy deployment to aid in her transition. Sophia lives in Columbia, MD and is working to engage stakeholders in that part of our service area to our offerings. Mark Boccia will continue to videotape our presentations and place links to them on our website along with photos that Igor Saracevic takes during our meetings and posts. I am indebted to Sandy Henderson, who has been handling our elections and voting processes to elect the new board and to approve our revised Potomac Chapter Constitution. I am thankful to June Fair for leading the effort to revise the constitution. I appreciate Terry Goodwin’s help with Programs. I am grateful to have the steady presence of these and so many other long-term members and the fresh energy of Sophia and our new members as we continue to implement the vision affirmed a year ago to keep this chapter in service to our stakeholders.

To that effect, we have an incredible line-up of presenters this season—many of whom we asked during the International Conference in April. These generous thought leaders of our profession are offering an array of topics that should be of interest to those newly entering the profession of performance improvement and to seasoned, expert performers alike. I am grateful for these presenters’ commitment to our profession and our chapter.

In this list of gratitude, I must include Altarum Institute, for hosting every monthly meeting for the entire 2009-2010 season! Altarum Institute is providing us a beautiful room to use that is convenient to both Metro’s Blue/Orange and Red lines. I feel so thankful to have a location committed for all of our meetings this year; this is such a luxury!

And, lastly, I am thankful to each of you who promotes our profession by attending our presentations and by being a member of this chapter. We look forward to seeing you at upcoming meetings. It’s going to be a great year!