President’s Quarterly Note

The 2010-2011 SMPS year will soon be over and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow board members who have made this year a success. This fantastic group of individuals has put in many hours (including some evenings and weekends) to support the SMPS mission: To advocate for, educate, and connect leaders in the building industry. I’d like to thank them each personally for their dedication. As a precursor to individual kudos, each of the following members has shown over-the-top dedication and professionalism.

Paulette Gibbins was our immediate Past-President this year; she has served on the board for 6 years. In this past year, Paulette took on the task of chairing the Awards Committee which was responsible for our first ever awards program. I might also mention that many of the hours she spent this year on behalf of SMPS coincided with her first-ever pregnancy and maternity leave. Now that’s above-and-beyond dedication.

Karen Ward has also provided 10 years of leadership to the chapter. This past year she served as Secretary but she has had many board positions, including President in 2007-2008. She always has sound advice to share and can be counted on to provide last minute help on any task. Karen organized and chaired our first Mentor program this year.

This year was Tricia Knapik’s first year on the board. Shortly after the SMPS year started Tricia lost her job due to lay-offs. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do but she knew she still wanted to continue as chapter Treasurer. During the past year, Tricia has continued to “balance our books” while at the same time launching her own business, which is thriving.

Cathy Brandewie has served as our Programs Chair this past year. Being Programs Chair can be very stressful because the chapter is relying on you to provide programs that are timely and relevant to our membership. She kept the programs meetings running smoothly and never got overwhelmed by the tasks put before her. Thanks to her leadership, our programming was top-notch this year, with great speakers and record attendance numbers.

Another stressful board position, Sponsorship Chair, was handled beautifully by Stefanie Raya. Not only did she revamp our sponsorship structure to include new annual platinum and educational sponsorships, she has also secured luncheon sponsors throughout the year. Stefanie’s work this year has kept us “in the black”.

Helga Diaz was the Communications Committee chair this year. She pushed to get the Austin Chapter into the social media scene through LinkedIn, Twitter and our Blog. She organized the efforts of many communications committee members to keep all our communications activities current and relevant. She also revamped the newsletter content which was distributed through blog postings and quarterly electronic newsletters.

Devin Williamson has a knack for making everyone feel comfortable, which is an important quality for a Membership Director. Devin has always been an enthusiastic advocate for the chapter and has a great can-do attitude.

Elizabeth Haynie is extremely organized and is responsible for so much as Director-at-Large. This position creates and sends out event emails, works the event registration and coordinates program needs. She does it all and makes it all look effortless.

Thanks also to the many volunteers that have helped us out this year and to the companies that encourage their marketing and business development professionals to be active in SMPS.

So as we say adieu to the passing of this year, we are also looking forward to a new and exciting beginning. We have a new board that will be starting in September and will carry the torch for the next year. I am very excited to continue to serve as your President for the next year and look forward to seeing you all at the next SMPS event!

- Erika Passailaigue, Datum Engineers, Inc.