As the year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on what an incredible year it has been, and certainly one of unexpected challenges! The end of a chapter is always bittersweet: grateful for the good times but ready to move on. I am extremely grateful for my Executive Committee and entire Leadership Team - they lived up to all the challenges and accomplished amazing things this year. I am grateful for our Members who volunteered, got involved, and showed up to our exciting events. And I'm grateful to have had this opportunity which has certainly helped me grow as a leader - and for those who helped to make sure that happened!
I'm immensely proud of what we accomplished this year. A year ago, our whole team got together and set ourselves a goal to increase membership engagement - and then came up with more ways to do that than we had time for. But between celebrating our 40th Anniversary, Professional Development events with outstanding speakers, providing outreach to hundreds of students and simply getting together for coffee; we doubled the number of people who came to two or more events this year, far exceeding our goals. We also doubled the number of people who came to three or more events over last year. This tells me that if someone shows up to an event, they want to come back -so we're doing something right. I hope next year we can grow these numbers even more.
Our 40th Anniversary was a real milestone in our Section's history. We listened to our Past President's tell us how far we've come - and how far we still have to go. We raised money to award twice as many scholarships as usual - over $20,000 to help move the future of engineering in a good direction.
I'm looking forward to taking a bit of a break, and to taking on new challenges in SWE. I've connected with many of our members via LinkedIn this year, but if I haven't already, feel free to reach out. One of my favorite parts of being the SWE-HA President was meeting so many of our amazing members. Thank you for all of your support this year.
I'm looking forward to supporting our new leaders and seeing all the wonderful things they accomplish. Best of luck to MK, Jennifer, Alex, Tamara, Kristin and Emily Anne!
All the Best,
Amy Gelsinger
President, SWE Houston Area

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