After Mike Spasoff and I attended Leadership Institute in February and welcomed new board members, we’ve spearheaded our new board’s strategic planning for 2013-2016 to refresh and align with IABC headquarters’ 21st century vision of IABC as a global flagship brand. The goal is for our members to have incredibly valuable resources for professional development and networking opportunities in an industry that is changing faster than the speed of mobile marketing. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles landscape has evolved: Silicon Beach to clean tech companies to healthcare…all providing diverse storytelling ground for communicators.
Christie Ly, Treasurer, Past President, and PR/Comms Consultant with Grayling Rose Kindel, has assisted greatly with supporting new strategic plans while engaging in the on-going preservation of our chapter’s all-volunteer board. While the board duties does place time demands on busy professional and personal lives, we’ve assembled a talented, diverse and engaged team that includes Christie’s in-depth knowledge of best practices and certainly her board wisdom!
Betty Henry, Communications Chair, of Betty Henry Communications (http://bettyhenry.com) has worked in-depth to provide a consistent newsletter as well as promotion for events. Warner Boutin, Development Chair, and Account Representative, www.businesswire.com is helping us liaise with other associations and leverage our Los Angelean niche. Warner is also working on getting content marketing panels pulled together. Mike Spasoff is our Media and Technology Chair, a Senior Media Development Consultant at Health Net (www.healthnet.com) and Owner, Media Integrated (www.mediaintegrated.com). Mike has been instrumental in refreshing our website, leading our collaborative efforts on Google Drive and leading the charge with me regarding strategic planning for 2013-2016.
We’re building a new online presence through social media. See our new FaceBook business page at facebook.com/IABCLosAngeles. Look for further refreshes on our website, emphasis on heavy professional development events, and a resounding positive effort to better collaborate with association counterparts like PRSA-LA and HPRA . We’re all wearing multiple hats towards substantive event programming.
While a one-time accidental “oops” calendar oversight occurred on our April networking event same night as PRSA-LA’s event… I just attended PRSA-LA’s “ConnecXions” event last night (5/8/13) in Santa Monica. Charlie Gu, one of the newest and youngest PRSA-LA board members, welcomed me and Kerry Bonner. Charlie and I discussed creating a premier collaborative event between the two associations at least once a year to leverage engagement and resources. We also agreed to look at chapter calendars ahead of time! And look for more HPRA collaboration with their terrific and very collaborative team.
Kyle Kearney, Student Outreach Chair, of Kyle Allen Photo/Video (www.kyleallenphoto.com) and I met with USC’s Rebecca Weintraub and Jordan Schmidt, head of the student chapter. Rebecca will be hosting an event at USC in the fall for adult and student IABC-LA members. More student outreach will be forging ahead for UCLA, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, University of Laverne, and Santa Monica City College.
Kerry Bonner, a communications consultant in Int’l Trade Development/China and European Markets is doing membership outreach and is involved in cross-networking through various professional organizations. Our membership continues to include some corporate sponsored memberships as well as a diverse membership of independent consultants and smaller business communications professionals, covering all facets of communications from social responsibility to investor relations to media relations.
Engagement and collaboration with our neighboring chapters such as Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco will facilitate more professional development opportunities for members, as well as regional webinars. We would like to leverage more globally-recognized speakers through headquarters’ connections. We can build exciting events while physically congregating West Coast chapters in respective venues while watching a global speaker in action from another country.
We understand career building and professional development content will excite members. We also support IABC headquarters’ community approach, both inside and outside the organization. We’ve gained tremendous momentum and traction over the last few months to provide members with an IABC-LA experience to cover vast chapter demographics, with a foothold into thriving as a skilled knowledgeable communications professional regardless of what career level.
Look for our “Who is IABC Los Angeles?” videos coming out shortly. These multiple 45-60 second videos will populate social media and gain traction in cross-promoting what makes the L.A. chapter unique from our other west coast chapters.
As Warner Boutin stated recently, “Everyone was clutch” in pulling together the Big Foot West networking event after we had experienced some speaker and venue cancellations over last few months. Collectively, our IABC-LA members and potential members are also clutch in supporting new strategic endeavors during this invigorating time for IABC headquarters, our IABC local chapter and our IABC-related professional lives.