Fall is here! We wouldn’t know it by the still-hot-and-humid days, the brilliance of the sun – still – but perhaps the late-night cool-ish breezes and certainly the PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING tells us it’s time to dig in and make the most of the final 3 months remaining in 2018.
Your NAWIC sisters have been busy this year, and, if you’re reading this, you may be one of the ‘do-ers’ in our great Coastal Georgia NAWIC Chapter #380! We all know it’s the ones who DO things, who actually READ the important material that lands in their email queues, who make time to get and keep momentum going in our chapter, despite having schedules as hectic and demanding as yours are, and who exemplify the passion around what they do to “enhance the success of women in the construction industry,” NAWIC’s mission. Commit to be THAT NAWIC woman! This is my – our – challenge for the new 2019 NAWIC year, which started October 1st.
We’ve had a busy year to date and wrapping up the 2017-18 NAWIC year, we joined hundreds of NAWIC women from across the country at the Hilton Orlando, right in the Disneyworld campus, for the NAWIC Annual Conference on August 15-18. Wow! Imagine 4 days of comradeship, sharing of best practices, workshops, speakers, industry updates and the latest developments, and opportunities to meet great women who work in the construction industry in some capacity, representing large international conglomerates to small, independent organizations and many entrepreneurs as well. What a great opportunity to broaden our horizons, both as individual businesswomen and human beings, as well as hone skills we bring to the job every day. Paige Henderson, your new Treasurer, and I took advantage of all the scheduled events, we divided-and-conquered on concurrently-offered workshops, and we hope we’ve brought back to our Chapter much knowledge and experience that will serve us well in the coming year. Know how grateful we are that you, our members, supported this trip and it is your vision and generosity that allowed us to attend.
As we look forward, we’re focusing on three areas:
Growing our chapter’s membership AND engagement. That “AND” is important: having members who aren’t interested or willing to come to monthly chapter meetings, socials, Block Kids, WIC week events, etc. can’t keep our chapter thriving and being of value to us all. We ALL have a part in the changes we need to make to INTEREST and ENGAGE each other! Speak up – take action and help us make this happen immediately.
Developing programming at our chapter meetings and events that ensures our interest, expands our knowledge of our industry and community and grows our reach beyond our meeting walls, which will likely result in building our collective business bases. We plan to include a brief yet in-depth Member Spotlight at each meeting going forward, so if you want to tell us about YOU and your business (we want to hear REAL stuff we may not already know, not just a recap of your bio or company mission statement), please reach out to me and we’ll get you scheduled. We also plan to invite guest speakers who we don’t hear elsewhere and we always consider how the material relates to and benefits our industry!
Communicating better! We are committed to upping the game to get information out to you with more detail, more interesting content and more frequently that this past year – we can’t achieve Goal #1 if we’re not communicating MUCH more than we have been.
To this end, your board has recently hired a marketing consultant on a monthly-fee basis to ensure we meet this goal, and we’ve just started working on this project. In fact, if you’re reading this, you are experiencing our main focus in this initiative: create and share a monthly newsletter that’s EXCITING and a “one stop shop” for all you need to know for the month and beyond. Expect to see more developments very soon. By the way, don’t sit back and wait … content has to come from ALL OF YOU or what will we communicate? You already have all the 2019 meeting and event dates on your calendar … don’t you??? If not, please see further in this document and ensure you get everything slotted in!
Enough from me … I would rather hear from YOU, and I know I am speaking for your entire board. We are only as good as you make us, and trust me, we are here to serve you and the chapter to the best of our ability, and beyond.
Please make a note of your board members! Please reach out and please stay in touch! See you on October 23rd at the chapter meeting! Will you really commit to NAWIC this year? Please say yes. Get involved, get engaged and make things happen … Be the Change you Want to See so NAWIC Coastal Georgia will be all you want it to be!
In love and service,
Laura Lee Bocade
NAWIC Coastal Georgia Chapter #380 President 2018-2019