Former Vice President, Region VIII, 2002-2005

Current Activity:
ASME's Global Communities Student Leadership

Having been involved in the ASME Council on Public Affairs during the early 1980s reorganization, participating in our recent very dynamic Continuity & Change process was perhaps most rewarding because I was working with other dedicated members at all levels. I do believe that we have staged ASME and our volunteer leadership to operate a much more agile and dynamic organization through the new Sector structure. But times will be different, requiring more collaboration and communication between our many operational boards and committees to emerge as a stronger organization.

I'm currently a Global Communities project manager for a team that has begun the District-based transition process of adapting and strengthening our programs for student leadership, which is looking at the traditional Region Student Leadership Seminars (RSLS) and Region Student Conferences (RSC). While all of the past Region-based events had great training content, we never had a coordinating structure to share best practices and lessons learned. Each event was certainly very meaningful, but we do need to do better for our members. As volunteer leaders, we all need to operate with an open culture that will guarantee the future strength of ASME. This will require better communications across Sector boundaries and a willing style to listen and value ideas from every membership level. All of our membership benefits, programs and services must let every member truly feel that ASME membership is compellingly attractive to their own career development.