"Above all, human existence requires stability, the permanence of things."
- Georges Bataille
Good Day EWI!
It seems like much longer than just 10 days ago since my last post as so much has taken place since then. As of my last post, I was preparing to depart for Salt Lake City for our Q2 Board meeting and what a whirlwind trip that was!
We arrived late Thursday afternoon and after checking into the lovely Salt Lake City Marriott downtown, member firm of EWI of Salt Lake City's President, Nikol Smith. What a great property, right in the heart of things. Thank you to Nikol and her staff for such wonderful hospitality. After bags were dropped we headed out to dinner with our entire staff. What a great way to start the weekend and so nice to meet Bonny and Kim in person. I was fortunate to finally be able to present new board members Benita Collins, Cortney Ewald-Ihde and Mary Helen Johnston with their board pins.
Friday morning saw us all rise early to meet with the Salt Lake City Chapter board for breakfast. What an energetic and passionate group of women we have there! It was refreshing to hear firsthand how this Chapter is tackling recruitment and general operations. Thank you all for rising early to meet with us. We appreciated the exchange with all of you!
We then went over to the new home of EWI and it is an AMAZING space that we can all be so proud of! Wendy and her team have created a warm, professional space while honouring our past extensively. I could have spent 1/2 the day just soaking up all the historic photos and materials posted on the walls. I encourage all of you who are ever in Salt Lake City to make sure to drop by the office.
Seeing the staff settling in so well with Wendy at the helm was so rewarding and heart warming to me. To witness firsthand this fresh start for our organization with solid leadership in place can only bring the long needed stability EWI needs for corporate operations.
We were blessed to have Dave Horsager with us on Friday until 2pm as we reviewed our current state of the strategic plan created in Dallas. Thankfully, I can say we have or are about to complete quite a few of our short term objectives already. As such, we identified three core priorities for the board and office through the remainder of 2013. They are as follows; Rebuild/Retain, Marketing and the EWI Foundation. A set of tactics is being worked on for each of these strategies and I look forward to sharing them with all of you soon.
The remainder of Friday was spent reviewing the renewals compared to our budget and then we had an hour long meeting with Dennis Astill and Scott Czaja, our lawyer and accountant. We were pleased to hear that our legal concerns with our former ED are progressing as expected. Dennis and Scott joined us for dinner that night.
As for Saturday, what can I say? We started at 9am, broke at 5pm for dinner and then reconvened back at the hotel for another hour to finalize our review of the both the corporate and chapter bylaws. The board members are all troopers and I thank them for staying focused and getting the agenda items all completed!
It was not the usual sad farewell on Sunday, as all of the board members have opted to attend Spring Conference at their own expense, so it was nice to say, "See you next month!"
This past week was a busy one summarizing all our discussions, following up action items and answering various Chapter inquiries. I am sad to announce that EWI of Baton Rouge has in fact decided to return their charter due to a lack of members willing to step back into board service. We are hopeful that many of them will opt to re-join as Members At Large though.
On a very positive note, I was pleased to receive a copy of the IEA March Newsletter wherein EWI was the main feature. On that note, I was thrilled today to see a posting from my Chapter for the first IEA member firm who has chosen to join EWI for the development of one of his staff members. We are in the process of exchanging contact information for both organizations in the ten cities where we both have Chapters.
Well, I have to save some news for the April Connect which I must also write this weekend, so will sign off here for now. Have a glorious weekend everyone!
- K
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