Free State Chapter - NCMA

PRESIDENT'S FORUM

Welcome to an exciting new year for the Free State Chapter! This year will bring about many challenges as the previous outstanding leadership team of Rex Elliott as President, Barbara Hammond as Vice President, and Ron Gerbasi as Treasurer passes the baton to a board of new officers. I am honored to accept the position as the new President, with Stephen Marchetti serving as President-Elect, Forestine Robinson as Vice President of Programs and Education, Ericka Smith as Secretary, Lisa Gordon as Treasurer, and Terri Patterson as Membership Chair. Fortunately, Rex has graciously agreed to remain on the board as Past President to ease this transition. We have very large shoes to fill and are committed to the success of the Free State Chapter.

Over the next few months we will be working on updating the by-laws, as well as the vision and mission statements for our Chapter. I am hopeful that we will be in a position to post the draft revised by-laws on our website in the next week or two for membership review with the intention of holding a vote at our October luncheon. This is an aggressive schedule, but I believe it must be done in order to better align ourselves with the recent changes in the NCMA National Organization and provide a structure that will ensure our continued success.

I’m happy to announce that the straw-man schedule for the 2008-2009 Program Year that was developed during our July planning meeting was approved at the August Board Meeting. We are pleased to kick off our program year with a luncheon at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland on October 16. Our guest speaker, John Baniszewski of Project Management, Acquisition, & Leadership – PMAL, will speak on the topic of Integrating Earned Value Management (EVM) with Acquisition. Many of you may recall John’s presentation last year on Project Management for Contracting Officers. We received very favorable feedback from attendees as he masterfully mixed valuable information with vivid and useful case studies/real life examples.

Beginning in November, our monthly events will be held on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. The purpose of this change is to avoid conflict with the NCMA audio seminars, which are frequently held on Thursday afternoons. Members are encouraged to participate in these audio seminars, which provide valuable information in a condensed 1-1/2 hour session. They provide opportunities for questions and answers and are very economical.

As we strive to increase our value to the membership, we are continually seeking input to improve our monthly meetings. In particular, we a looking for suggestions on topics of interest, speakers, preferred time of day, and location for our meetings. If you have any suggestions, please send them to Forestine Robinson.

We also want to make sure that our newsletter responds to the concerns and interests of our membership. If you have any suggestions for topics that you’d like to see covered in upcoming issues, please send them to our newsletter editor, Robin Evans. This is an organization of volunteers, and we count on the participation of our members. I look forward to working with you all in the coming year!

Valeree Combs
President

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