Video Transcript

Welcome everyone and we’re going to keep this moving and try not to be too much of a honor although some of this it’s hard to avoid we’re going to have a two-hour meeting from 9:00 to 11:00 love your spirit some of like we have an annual report which is downloaded to Whova possibly uploaded I’m not sure which term is more correct so if you want to check out the annual report you’ll find it on the Whova app.

I also think this isn’t not the right slide. Okay let’s go ahead here yeah here we go all right so when we come to the election portion of the program those of you who are the designated representative from your membership group will be allowed to vote those of you who have who if there is multiple folks from your group only one of you can vote did you receive an email from our staff notifying you or get having you respond and let us know which which one of you will be voting today if not we’re just going to have to do it on an honors system if you’re the designated voter for your group please vote otherwise do not later in the in the meeting we’re going to initiate some discussion and specifically about strategic planning we’re concluding the last bit of a three-year strategic plan we’re about to start a five-year cycle from 2020 in January through the end of 24 we’ll have a five-year strategic plan which hopefully will have finalized and approved by January 1 what we want from you guys today are your ideas for what you’d like this organization to focus on and accomplish in the next five years we want to include you a lot of times this process has been not as inclusive as we’re going to make at this time so we want you if you come up with ideas you can raise your hand during the discussion portion of the meeting and we’ll take notes and if you just want to think about it and give us information and feedback via email later we’ll consider that also so you don’t have to have you know do all your thinking here and now you’ll have time to give us input later all right this you know I’m not taking credit for this the entire organization accomplished these things. We developed the portfolio review process for the CETMB, which is a certified educator therapeutic massage and bodywork yeah whooping is allowed apparently so that’s good this is an important thing.

We finalized the model curriculum for teacher training programs and what that means is is that if you are doing a teacher training program we’re going to ask your you to have your program conform with a template and we will ask you to map your curriculum and compare it to that model curriculum in order to be an approved teacher training program so that your graduates are directly eligible for a certificate we received a $75,000 grant from the AMTA, which were really appreciated it’s it’s really allowed us that was polite applause almost a golf club I would do a whoop on that one myself but yeah the grant will be dispersed over two years fifty thousand the first year 25 the second.

We have now launched the the certification certificate program not certification there’s a distinction because that’s we’ve been round and round about that anyway the program is launched we have we have received to to folks who are applying one has submitted their portfolio and that is about to be put out for review by our portfolio reviewers we also hired the project manager portfolio reviewers we have advocated for the coalition we meet with the Coalition of National Massage Therapy Organizations it’s it happens in the first week of May every year and that’s another thing during the strategic planning discussion if you have ideas for what you’d like us to take to the coalition meetings what you would want us to try to advocate for on behalf of the education community you can make suggestions in the strategic planning; we have an enhanced social media campaign; there’s been a slight uptick in membership; we’re concluding the three-year strategic plan; and then there’s a various other things that we’ve done as an organization.

I as the you know the President usually has the responsibility for running the board meetings running the executive committee meetings meeting with staff because the president is the designated supervisor of staff. I also represent the Alliance on two other boards ACIH and IHPC and attended a few meetings so that’s it for for my report.

Penny Jeffrey has she is our vice-president she’s not able to be here today I think her responsibility is at North Carolina State University conflicted with this conference and she chose to keep her job so she’s not attending yeah we were thought that made sense anyway the VP’s role is to support the president stand in place of the president when unable to function oversee the function of all the committee’s and then she was also specifically the board liaison to the certification process committee and was responsible for overseeing in coordinating the process of developing the portfolio review process she was on the task force with a couple other folks including me to search for our project manager and we’ve found Deanna Sylvester. We had about 80 applicants for that position that was it was almost overwhelming we had we had a lot of work to do just to process the number of applicants and try to find the top ones and then interview and you know it was it was a really in-depth process but Deanna rose at the top of that group and I think were very happy with that hire.

Penny was also the committee chair for searching and that’s with what I just talked about there okay normally our VP chairs a meeting of all the committee chairs and board liaisons once a year so that all the different members of committees can understand the work of the other committees and see their role in the big picture because if you’re just doing the work of your own committee and you have no connection with the rest of the organization and the work that’s going on you can feel a bit isolated a bit disconnected and unclear as to how your piece fits in so that that has worked well for folks to see their their part in the whole picture and there you go that’s I’ve kind of touched on the other stuff so that’s Penny and me.

Now I’m going to pass the mic to Sandy Mason who’s our Treasurer and she also as the treasurer according to our bylaws she is the chair of the Finance Committee and the board liaison to the Finance Committee one thing I would like to express a lot of gratitude for the Leadership Development Committee. Thank you so much because I have a working and very knowledgeable Finance Committee to work with me it’s really essential for the health of the finances of the organization which is essential for the health of the organization itself so thanks for giving me people who know what they’re doing and help me figure out what I’m doing our mission and mandate the financial functions of the Alliance are served to support its broader mission everybody kind of sees that that’s one thing that Penny Jeffrey helped me see when we were doing our meetings as board liaisons was that the finances of this organization are part and parcel of every single one of the committees so it’s not just me I’m involved with all the rest of it too so it makes me feel like I’m more supported and that we are all working towards one common goal of course the financial practices underpin the ability of the Alliance to survive to thrive yes and undertake projects and activities that reflect its mandate and we’re committed to stability accountability and integrity in the function of its financial affairs.

So I think that as Stan already mentioned that our Annual Report is on the Whova app that right yeah so if anyone wants to see the details that’s where you find some pie charts and some the profit and loss statement so quarterly profit and loss statements at that point and here we’re just kind of basic employment students that we had is that we have a functioning budget yay that helps recently approved by the Board of Directors and we’re working on budget to actual reports so that everybody can see how well that’s working for us but it’s sort of an ongoing organic beast that budget so that we can work and try to adapt it to what we’re doing since we’re starting something really new this year in the teacher certification process what kind of income is going to happen from that and what kind of expenses are going to happen because of that are new to us so we’re working on that we’ve got a plan and we will adjust it accordingly the AMTA donation has taken a huge burden off of us and we’re just really really thrilled that they are committed to improving teacher qualifications throughout the country in this profession we always review and update the financial policies each year and this year close to my heart is that we didn’t upgrade to QuickBooks and any of you who use that you realize that that’s a sort of a an integral tool in trying to create ports and reports and also keep the finances straight our net assets as of July 1st 2019 are up here on the board that includes cash and receivables so it’s a little bit of an awkward slot for us to look just at July 1st but this is because it’s right before the Congress it’s also right in the midst of our AMTA donation and also our teacher certification revenue so this is kind of just a little snapshot of where we are at the moment the revenue that the organization has survived on over the first 10 years of operation our membership in conference revenues in the future will include teach teacher certification or teaching certificates revenue from that program and also teacher training so right now those are the two main and hopefully our finances will be enhanced as we move into these new programs.

Gini Olson is the executive director of the Massage Therapy Foundation Emmanuel is a school owner in the Chicago area and businessman and he’s just very knowledgeable as well.

Okay so now we’re on to strategic planning yeah good morning everybody thank you for being here just wanted to start by saying that I came to my first conference eight years ago it was in Tucson where I live so it was easy but I got so excited about being amongst my peers and oh wait there’s other people out there who are doing what I do and I get to be with them for a few days so it got me jacked upenough to be involved and I have been on the board for a while I am gonna be giving up my seat so I just wanted to thank everybody and thank you guys for my experience I really appreciate it it’s been a ton of fun and I would highly recommend it to anybody yeah and I was quite involved in the development of the first strategic plan and I’m happy to be passing the baton on to one of the new board members probably who’s gonna do a great job with it but I I feel good about giving some ideas and some thoughts about how he might shift gears and do something different which is a more inclusive process so I hope that goes really well this morning for everybody and as we move forward and that’s all just based on some experience that I have doing it for another organization so that’s where all this little shift is coming from and I hope it goes really well but I think it will yeah so we’ve got a mission to extend the existing three-year strategic plan to continue focusing on the main goals of the organization as well as either homes that address the needs of the organization we want to give guidance to the activities of the board as well as the committee’s through that strategic plan but as Stan said we’re going to be looking for input from you guys with regard to possibly what else we might be thinking of what else we might be doing how could we look at things a little differently maybe okay we approved the first strategic plan in 2018- 19 and in their main meeting in 2017 and we’re also really honing in on developing and streamlining a plan to review and update the report on a regular basis so that’s how the the whole committee will work so this is a certification process so I would like to thank Stan definitely. Stan he’s been instrumental and just kind of helping me be a good board member in general but also with the strategic plan and Sheri Manthai she here, Sheri here no but she did a great amount of work and we really appreciate her her efforts as well so thanks.

Hi just real quick I’m Virginia Cowen that is in Dr. Virginia Cowen. I joined the certification process committee when I had a worked in higher education and integrative health research for about 18 to 20 years and left the University and took the course curriculum things that the university was discontinuing and put it in an online platform and poof I’m a seee provider so then there was a category for me to actually join the Alliance and so I joined the Alliance and said I’m happy to volunteer I’ve got a background in higher ed and my skills could be a little bit useful and I think Ruth might agree that I kind of jumped in and was able to help out with this so okay so penny was a penny Ruth Celia Cindy Cindy’s around here somewhere I haven’t met her in person okay I met you on the phone I think and Sandy and myself did a whole lot of work on the certification process the mission and mandate is to complete phase four of the NTESP in collaboration with the NTTCDC and all I can tell you is that CDC does not mean Center for Disease Control’s so we can look that up in the report and the major accomplishment was really two things that you’ll see a little bit later this morning and then an unfolding right now as we speak on line one is the portfolio certification pathway for the educator certification program so we’re getting all our certification words here right here and hopefully you’ve all seen the news announcements when the press releases that we had six people complete the the beta test to really make sure that the methodology work may beta testing the words came into our being with a lot of the internet websites going up and crashing and that kind of thing but there were some volunteers who worked with that as well to ensure that this certification is an accurate representation of you as educators and what you do and it’s not just educators in massage schools but it’s also CE educators so there was a lot of work that went into this a lot of really good healthy discussion the other thing where I kind of jumped in was the teacher training curriculum and this model curriculum the the board is still discussing what it is that we do with this but the idea that what based upon the assessments that have been done what are the sort of knowledge skills and sometimes would add in attitudes that are associated with an effective massage therapy educator so the curriculum again has been around for a little while when we came in and the committee was trying to figure out what to do it that I said well had he mapped it they’re like mapped it have we mapped it well generally you write a curriculum you write courses and then once you offer courses you go back and map them to make sure that you’re meeting your objectives we went ahead and did that just to make sure that we had some areas that were covered in our model curriculum and looked at areas that were under covered and so that was really enlightening I think to kind of look at the hours to make sure that we weren’t over representing in some areas and and spending a lot of time but really looking at things that were effective for for massage therapy educator so I’m gonna hit the button we’re gonna see what we see on the next slide that’s not us so we’re going back okay and so what I can say just real briefly is that the the what I just described to you about the teacher training curriculum was hours of work and I don’t want to scare you off in hours of work but it’s been done and it’s hours of work that will benefit you as we go forward with the certification with applicants and also start to look at what criteria you might have for even hiring educators and remembering one of the things we talked about is educators can go out and get a master’s degree in health professions education that’s why I’m well and good it doesn’t necessarily cover what we do as massage therapy educators so there’s a lot of great work you’ll benefit from that as we move forward and that’s all I got.

Good morning everybody I’m the board liaison for the conference planning committee it’s been my honor to also serve on that committee for a number of conferences and when I became board liaison that just seemed to be really a good fit for me so I’d like to thank first of all some very important people with this Nancy and Cherie would you stand up let’s give them a big hand for this conference [Applause] this has been a lot of phone calls the last year is a two-year process between them but they start right away picking the new location and then from there it’s logistical just straight across the board and Cherie and Nancy have mastered this and worked tirelessly this is a very busy committee as far as things especially the last you know a couple of months the tying all the loose ends up and then also being here getting things ready to stuffing tote bags making sure everybody all the exhibitors and everybody are happy with everything the prizes so it’s been great but the other committee members are Ruth and Diane Dale Victoria Lila and Dee Vickers and all those guys were involved are only those committee members here yeah yeah true seer anybody else yep so stand up you guys are on the committee thank you for being part of it we really appreciate your time and effort it pulls all these things together so our mission and mandate was to plan and execute a conference every two years it sounds simple but boy is a lot of work and anybody ever planned any kind of event kind of knows you know getting everybody happy and getting all the little fine details and I think what was Cherie’s husband described you as what meticulous meticulous yeah that’s what it takes and she is our meticulous person she just follows up and has everything in her brain and having her sitting in one location is good because everybody just migrates to her to go Cherie all weekend so it’s very good so it’s been my pleasure being on this committee being a part of the committee and also the board liaison so thank you guys for all being here we hope to make it bigger and better the next time thank you.

So I shocker I’m the chair of the marketing committee but the marketing committee is made up of myself of Cherie Sohnen-Moe, Randy Clark, Rebecca Farrway and Wanda Allen. If you are on our committee would you please stand and be recognized I think just over here in the corner thank you very much you guys and we we meet once a month we do a Zoom call how many guys use zoom yeah it’s kind of fun to see everybody it keeps people engaged so we keep those meetings to no longer than 90 minutes even if we’re not done and right now we’re accepting nominations for two additional members to our committee and of course Naomi supports us very well as well so our big picture is basically we had to update the marketing plan for the from two years ago we do that out actually annually and the committee members brainstorm and also plan all of our social media we also work with a marketing company we have a marketing company that we pay to assist us in the execution of some of this because a lot of us are not technology wizards so we schedule campaigns send different campaigns throughout the year to promote visibility of the organization as well as engage our members and we also assist the staff with a lot of the content and themes for the monthly newsletter our specific tasks sorry this is the boring stuff we have to mentioned update the marketing plan we submit a budget we increase our mandate is to increase social media engagement as well we submit a monthly report and a monthly report to the board and we also contribute to the newsletter each month a different committee does a little report for the newsletter a little bit more fun is in as a part of our committee we celebrate what’s going well each month in fact we get down and we asked each each member you know what’s going well what are we celebrating this month what will well for you we promote the social media ideas through our own social media pages and engaging others who have a lot of followers and you’ll notice the hashtags that you can be using when you post on your social media accounts we create visibility for the teacher certification a program before coming here had you guys heard about the teacher certification immediately following this meeting you’re gonna hear a lot more about it and so we’re very excited that this is launching and then part of our committees responsibility to is we figure out themes for the newsletter and we imagine and bring into being additional marketing content for special progress projects in addition to the Congress and teacher certification so basically we are mission on our mandate is to create visibility for the organization and engage our members so the staff oh I want to give a shout out this is a fun fun picture but you can let me select Phillip asked you this his dad actually took this picture so kind of cool but so the staff so Naomi produces it does a bit of website maintenance actually goes ahead and does the press releases we may write them but in the execution they design a lot of it so they do a lot of the the actual technical stuff so that’s why we have paid staff in place to handle the important stuff they implement the campaign so when you get emails that’s actually coming from Home Office you know from our headquarters and our staff also coordinates our ideas and puts them into play with the marketing company that that we do pay our committee also provides the monthly newsletter support organizes ideas written articles so as a part of our committee you get to be a part of all of this you know generating ideas brainstorming with other colleagues about the themes submit articles to like Massage Magazine and Massage Today and again assist with writing those press releases so those are our mandates those are that’s our vision so what did we accomplish we did complete the annual marketing plan we contributed lively content for the monthly newsletter we enjoyed much more consistency with our social media and added how-to page how-to videos to our website that is that afmte.org promoted the pay it forward campaign we engaged with presenters and exhibitors and sponsors did anyone see any of those Facebook interviews that we did yeah yeah that’s kind of fun all right you know there’s little bumpy to start sorry they were so long but we got better and faster as the months progressed we promoted an early-bird campaign where people could register early for the Congress and we promoted to pay it forward campaign our increase actually for the attendance for this Congress we were up by almost 20% so from 2017 so that was actually yeah very happy with that very happy and the best is yet to come 2021 Amen so we I mentioned we held monthly meetings we create assisted with the promotional materials for educator of the year assisted in the design of to postcards that went out to trying to remember how many people that went out to it’s like a thousand people that it went out to as far as promoting the Congress and promote promoting teacher certification and the AFMTE was represented at IMTRC so the international massage therapy research conference and also at the Florida State Massage Therapy conference just some stats for you we had in 2017 in August of 2017 we had forty seven forty as far as our followers on Facebook in August two thousand 18 we had 52 46 and right now we have 6186 so 6186 followers on our Facebook page that’s a good engagement yeah that’s not bad at all so we increased over the last two years by almost 1,500 followers which is a 31% increase so thank you for that thank you for sharing what we post yeah yeah yes and again part of our challenge I mean part of our challenge is visibility people just don’t know we exist as soon as people learn about us they’re like oh my gosh we should be a member yeah I know so that’s the challenge that we face is just creating the visibility so with your help and then sharing those things that the AFMTE posts whether it’s on Facebook or on Twitter or on LinkedIn it really does help us get some traction so again just some statistics for you in 2017 we had a little over 1,200 followers on Twitter where we have a net increase of 128 followers on Twitter or over three hundred thirteen hundred we do have a very vibrant YouTube channel and that is at AFMTE.ORG and lots and lots of videos on that channel so feel free to be come to join us to follow us on YouTube we’ve got a lot of engaging content in fact all of the board members did short videos to tell you who they are and kind of why they serve and they’re posted there we do have an Instagram page as well how do you guys are on Instagram cool follow us we put some we put some stuff on there again it’s not you know it we’re not looking to be a distraction we’re just looking to engage with you so we can share your stuff from your school and you can share our stuff these are so we’re we are new to Instagram but we’re not new to you guys tagging us so here are some pictures that are tagged with the AFMTE from other conferences so check it out we’ve got you know just people having fun and enjoying the congress enjoying classes and so we love to nominate to acknowledge our virtual assistant who is actually busy doing some stuff right now her name is Naomi – Naomi didn’t sneak in the room did she no but does she’s busy behind the scenes making everything run and she really is she makes us run as well as far as the marketing committee and so now it is on to the Teacher Resource Development Committee that TRDC Dr. Cowen

Hi there I’m still Dr. Virginia Cowen hasn’t changed in the past 20 minutes so and so Teacher Resource Development Committee shout-out to Pete Whitridge Pete can you wave or stand or do jumping jacks or something yep he’s been involved with the Alliance for a long time [Applause] really a wonderful grounding member Arlene Haessler is not here but I understand it’s in the process of relocating her life she is massage therapist and librarian down in Florida and it’s extraordinarily helpful to have a librarians input on this committee Diane Mastnardo who most of you met yesterday was there for part of the year and stepped off the committee and then I joined them as board liaison we’ve met for the most part monthly and completed work in between meetings so that’s our committee members if you are a teacher looking for resources if you have ever served or used acetal if you even know what a cetyl is Center for Excellence in teaching and learning it’d be interesting to connect with Peter myself that’s really the role of this dysfunction if you will in the Alliance working to put resources together so the charge the committee is to assemble and continually update I knew y’all can read this list of resources so key word here’s a list of resources for educators to learn more about how to improve their teaching skills and to assist those who wish to design massage and bodywork teacher training programs so that’s the charge to the committee but there are a lot of things that dovetail off of this based upon the work that we did when I joined this group so we have completed but not yet released substantial revisions to an expansion of the resource list so a couple things happened one was in looking at the list we were able to get information from Naomi to say that this area of the Alliance’s website is used which is great it’s also publicly available which is not great because it’s really a perk for you as members to be able to go and look for things so that we’re supporting you and we’re engaging you it’s key word here is resource development and it’s really aimed at teachers so that was one of my first questions as why is this publicly available but the second thing is that it’s we when we looked at the materials that were in the directory we had a fork in the road and the fork in the road was that it contained materials that were useful for you in the classroom and it contained materials for andragogy pedagogy curriculum and instruction that were useful for you as instructors and along the way I joined the EDNet Susan Salvo’s Facebook group and started to look at the chatter there and I realized teachers were asking for both all the time I need something for my classroom I’m looking for ideas to help my teaching and as teachers if you went to a Center for Excellence in teaching and learning at a university you would get both of those kinds of services so we have enough materials but then the other thing I did because I’m quantitative is I was like hey guys mind if I take this little spreadsheet and analyze this and see what we got and we discovered that with everything in the directory we have less than 60 unique resources so we had a lot of entries but some of them are duplicated across areas so this is where the librarians help comes in so in looking at this and saying if you’re first looking for something let’s start with the user experience I am I looking to help my teaching my pedagogy my andragogy curriculum instruction am I looking for how to how to create a rubric or do I really just need that active learning resource and so we started to categorize the resources in a big Google sheet and and make entries in Arlene and Pete both were able to go start to look at broken links instead of linking to journal articles let’s link to journals there’s a really famous article in a medical education journal about integrated learning and the subjects of the research were massage therapy students so this is something most of us massage them over like wait a minute you know have we found this information so there’s a lot there’s research in higher ed that’s applicable to us that probably were not really engaging with and talking about and for some of you at least for me that would probably be interesting to at least put it out there for you to consume so we as we expanded our list we have classroom materials and it’s educational resources it’s materials to use in your class teaching strategies activities and it’s everything from books and apps and websites and blogs and and and and that kind of thing that will link us to information links to publishers links to textbooks and then faculty development again books websites journals blogs organizations and more and the faculty development originally we’re trying to catalog everything based on the core competencies for teaching and it wasn’t working it wasn’t working because we had information in two different spaces so we have a really nice functional list with I think now 150 unique resources which is an improvement of our unique resources so now we’re looking at what do we do with it and so this committee did again a lot of work and not to put you off with a lot of work we did a lot of work and it was really fun but we reached a point where like now how do we put it out there for people to consume and came back to the board and said should this be a resource for our members rather than a publicly available resource and overwhelmingly it was like well yes because we want to engage you with this so going forward we started to look at ideas and we wanted to look at this reimagining and setting up the teacher resource directory for members so it’s behind the member wall you have to log in and it needs ongoing maintenance needs care and feeding just like a pet so here are a couple of examples that Arlene just kind of popped up this is Monroe County Library in Florida where you you go into a library website now it looks a lot different than the old card catalog in years past and it’s not just lists but it’s kind of looking at following your little breadcrumbs to figure out what it is you’re looking for and ultimately we can populate with lists so that we can look at duplication but not over count what we have so that is one possibility we looked at and said okay you know how now how will you be able to do this and then the other question was how do or how do we or do we make it interactive for sharing amongst educators so you see a recipe wiki here and if you can’t see in the back that’s it this is just to making things a little bit more visual but with the idea that and let me just ask I like doing surveys how many of you are educators into massage therapy school right now not a CE provider-specific over to school okay all right I want you to keep keep your hands up for a sec and if you are not doing anything interesting or cool that you would like to share in your classroom put your hand down so some of you have stuff to share right and and so how do you share the cool and interesting things that you’re doing so that number one other people find out about it this is a resource you’re here talking to each other but likely some of us can benefit from each other and as a resource there may be ways to migrate towards sharing and engagement to engage you and give you feedback in our resources so one other thing you know is there possibility for interactive venue this is one of the questions that we arrived at and another was a discussion forum for members so not Edna the big massage therapy group of the million members those kinds of things where people you know always ask kind of white wacky wacky questions but do we want a discussion forum so that we start to engage our collective brain as massage therapy educators to further ourselves both in primary education at CES so this is what the Resource Development Committee is working at right now spine Pete or myself we don’t fully know exactly what talent we need on this committee but we’d like some people with talent who can help us I master here well you know we do it and Naomi is a staff member has been great but if we can better describe how to put our resources out there we can grow this list and then instead of running it to the center of teaching and learning or running off to a library you can come to us online and start to find resources engagement what you need and so that’s it’s a little it’s taking our mission we think and making it better and we’ll see how it goes on the board meeting on Sunday I’m sure so the board thing so that’s what I got for you.

Moving on to leadership development thank you the Leadership Development Committee has basically three jobs one is committee population the committee’s in different ways let us know that they’re looking for members when we first started there was quite a bit of we want to form a committee and we need five people at this point it’s a little bit more that the committees are established and from time to time they need help finding a new member or two we also advise the board in different ways we were kind of a committee that’s been around for a while and it’s made up of people who have a reasonable amount of organizational experience so we can be a sounding board you know individuals can ask us questions or sometimes we’re asked to look at a particular issue and that that just happens as as needed from year to year and the third piece is to act as a nominating committee for the board this is a big part of our our job each year and it starts with a month in February where we actually do detailed interviews with current board members establish the needs you know the openings and the needs to you know four skills and experience sets to fill those openings and then go on to engage with you and try to find the best candidates to meet those current needs so that’s essentially what we do each year we are an elected committee because our orange origins are really as a nominating committee where the I think one elected committee in the organization current members we’re actually down a a membrane you’ll see that we have an election to fill our fifth member coming up so current members include Joe Lubow, Tim Herbert, Su Bibik and Dawn who is our board liaison but I also just want to give a thanks to Bev who was our board liaison for most of the year and segwayed off a little bit more on the the slate selection process I think you will have experienced it as members seeing us sending out different emails at different points in the year but as I said we start with a need assessment a set of interviews one-on-one in-depth interviews with board members we then make a call for applicants we interview all the applicants who come our way recommend a slate and you should have in front of you if you haven’t seen it it should be sitting on your table a handout that includes photographs and our rationale for why we’ve put someone on a slate on the slate and also so a message from them so you see a page for each person and a handout that you have in front of you and then we collect we conduct the election which is about to happen so I just want to say just for a moment here how great it is to work with the members of this committee and to thank them again Joe Tim sue and Bev and don’t we actually in the course of doing our work have to have a very kind of open and trusting and respectful dialogue we talk over a lot of different things we talk about the merits of individual people in terms of meeting a particular need or fulfilling a particular role or opening and it’s so great to work in a group that functions so well together and has that kind of collegial dialogue so thanks to each of you again this year has been another good year for us.

And I’d like to actually call up Su Bibik at this point to say a couple of things you almost made it through the day without me but no here I am so one of the things that we do is we are always looking for people to help us grow the organization and so we populate the committee’s and not quite in as specified of a process or procedure but we we do interview and look for who’s going to be the best fit for the committee’s and meet the committee’s needs and you heard some really great invitations today one I heard from Virginia and we know we have invitations from the conference planning committee and we would love to do what I feel like many of us as founding members were wanting to do when we started this organization which is not as not as in a hierarchical concept you would pass the torch we want to light the torches of the rest of you who are sitting here and doing what needs to be done to move our profession forward hi so underneath the chair of each one so yes under your chairs you will find an invitation personally written for you so one of the things that we did was we have a membership survey I don’t want you to be shy about this at all this is not a commitment you’re not signing away your life what you’re saying is I have a curiosity I’m interested I have some skills I have this much time or I will have this much time down the road we want to know all of that because we plan on an annual basis for all of these things and if you haven’t taken the time to read this I suggest just for your pure amusement you pick it up Tim Herbert and I had a very creative moment one Friday evening Chardonnay may have been involved in my end and we were putting this together certification process committee you’ve earned bragging rights educational Congress planning committee a party with a purpose Finance Committee show me the money honey Leadership Development Committee who elected these people marketing committee shout it from the rooftops Membership Committee come join us and make it better NTTCDC this is this is Tim’s joke: join so you know what the hell this means [Music] [Laughter] strategic planning who’s got the map TRDC share what you know so pick up one of these okay fill them out you can give them to any of us on the Membership Committee I’m sure if you give them – Naomi she’ll get them to us the other thing I want to say is you can do it off of the Whova app okay so you go into Whova you go into agenda an unadjusted you follow that and you get to education or election okay election process and then that will take you to the link link to the survey do the survey and then what you know what you know what you get to talk to one of us and yeah I mean you get a conversation with one of us and and I can tell you just from personal experience I’m really engaging on the phone so so please come join us you know we all want this thing to happen so basically get up off of your tush and make it happen thank you very much yeah it’s time for the election and Joe liubao is going to moderate that process Joe okay good morning thank you everybody especially Debra and Sue so the Board of Directors is composed of seven to nine directors there always have to be at least seven the bylaws now require that there always be at least one member representing the school’s stakeholder group one representing seee and at least one representing faculty there can be more and many of these folks represent more than one of those groups and the board is currently all four of those groups including allied members are all well represented the current board stand is the president penny Penny’s the vice president should I say last names Sandy’s the treasurer Beverly is the secretary Bev and Virginia dawn Terry and Jody are board members and there has been one empty seat for nearly two years now I think right so of those these four are seats that are up this year for election the other five seats were filled in last year’s online election so those for Dawn has a remaining year I’m sorry she does never meeting here she is up for reelection and rather than running for reelection in the seat that she’s in she is looking to fill the remaining year in that empty seat so she’s running for one year that is left in in a term Bev is resigning her seat and Michelle Renee is running to fill the remaining two years in Beverly’s seat Randy Clark and MK Brennan are running for the two seats that are being vacated when I say they are running this is the slate that the LDC recommends we we did interviews with the board members to find out their needs we interviewed all the folks who applied to be considered to be on the slate and in a few moments when we run the election we will then open up each of these seats to the membership if anybody would like to challenge them for the seat we will then hold an election this is a member run democratic organization and while the LDC recommends these folks this is an election not an appointment and if anybody would like to run you’ve got to be eligible to sit on the board to run for a seat you’ve got to be either an allied member a school member a faculty member or a CE member supporting members we appreciate your support but the bylaws don’t allow you to sit on the board so right that’s what I just said so now we’ll have the election are there any questions about the way this will work I will for each seat I will call for nominations from the floor three times you can either nominate yourself and say I would like to run or you can say I think so-and-so would be a great board member they would have to accept the nomination and they must be here yeah if there is a challenge you’d have a few moments to to speak about why you think you’d be a good board member and the LDC recommended candidate would also have a few moments to speak and then we would ask for votes so the first seat is Dawn Hogue who has been a board member and is running for re-election to fill the remaining year in the empty seat is there anybody who would like to run for the one year remaining in the in the term of the empty seat second call for nominations from the floor for the one year term third call for nominations from the floor for the one-year term Dawn Hogue is re-elected to the board by acclamation so first call for nominations from the floor for the two years remaining in Bev’s seat the LDC recommends Michele Renee for that seat are there any nominations from the floor two-year term second call for nominations from the floor for the two-year term third call for nominations from the floor for the two-year term Michele Renee is elected by acclamation [Applause] the remaining two term seats that are up for election this year are full three-year terms and the first one we recommend Randy Clark are there any nominations from the floor for the full three-year term second call for nominations from the floor to challenge Randy Clark third call for nominations from the floor to challenge Randy Clark Randy Clark is elected by acclamation and the last opportunity to run for a seat a full three year term for which the LDC recommends MK Brennan are there any nominations from the floor to run for this seat second call for nominations for a full three-year term last call for nominations from the floor for board seat MK Brennan is elected by acclamation and she’s not here right the leadership development committee as Debra said is a an elected yeah there are two more seats Terrie and Jodi’s seat are both up and they are have made it their intention to re-up and run for reelection and the LDC recommends that they be reelected but I are there nominations from the floor for the three-year term that Terrie Yardley-Nohr has been occupying second call for nominations from the floor for Terrie seat third call for nominations from the floor for Terrie seat Terrie Yardley-Nohr has been reelected by acclamation and Jodi Scholes has indicated her interest in running for re-election the LDC recommends a reelection first call for nominations from the floor to challenge Jodi Scholes second call for nominations from the floor for Jodi seat third call for nominations from the floor Jodi is re-elected by acclamation the LDC as Debra said is the only elected committee currently Debra is the chair has been the chair since the committee was founded in 2010 at the organization’s founding Debra and I were both reelected last year electronically Tim Herbert, Su Bibik are both running for reelection and we have had an empty seat on our committee we have interviewed Cari Johnson Pelava and we proposed that she fill the empty seat on our committee but we will now hold an election for these three seats and since I’m not running I’m gonna continue running the election unless somebody thinks I shouldn’t because I’m on the committee anybody object to me running the election for the LDC okay thank you so Tim Herbert it’s a two-year term all of the LDC terms are two-year terms anybody first call for nominations from the floor for the LDC Leadership Development Committee seat currently occupied by Tim Herbert second call for nominations from the floor for the Leadership Development Committee seat occupied by Tim Herbert third call for nominations from the floor for of the Leadership Development Committee seat occupied by Tim Herbert Tim has been reelected by acclamation Tim first call for nominations from the floor for the Leadership Development Committee seat occupied by Su Bibik second call for nominations from the floor for the LDC seat occupied by Su Bibik third call for nominations from the floor for the LDC seat occupied by Su Bibik has been reelected by acclamation first call for nominations from the floor for the currently empty Leadership Development Committee seat second call for nominations from the floor for the empty LDC seat last call for nominations from the floor for the empty LDC seat Cari Johnson Pelava has been elected by acclamation and thank you so much i we do this every at every conference and I’m always aware that you have always elected our slate every time we put a lot of work into developing the slate we think we picked candidates who are really good fits for the work the board needs to do yet I’m acutely aware that this is a democracy and I hope that it was clear that you had the choice to run thank you [Applause]

Let’s engage in some strategic planning discussion we have theoretically we have until 11 o’clock and then Deanna is going to give her report so we have about a half an hour potentially to talk about strategic planning this is something new we haven’t asked you to be included in this and it’s I think an oversight not to include you and this is a perfect time to do it because we’re about to start a five-year plan cycle and we’d like your input so in this in the huva app one in the annual report there’s a summary of core functions in the current strategic plan and basically you know you can look at those to get some ideas of what we currently have been doing and you know feeling as part of what we think fulfills our our mission and vision but I’d like your input as far as what do you think the Alliance needs to do on behalf of the education community and what I’d like to start with is when we have coalition meetings with the other national organizations it’s ABMP, AMTA, COMTA, the Federation of state licensing boards, and Massage Therapy Foundation and NCBTMB, within the Alliance that those seven groups each group has has its own mandate and they have their own board gent in general and so the missions are not always sometimes they’re in conflict what we try to do is find areas where we can collaborate and work together to advance the profession and those of you who have you know look at oh they met this year you know wonder what happened there which they do this or that what I’d like you two to talk about now is are there things that you would like us to do and/or represent on your behalf in those meetings any any ideas Cindy include the AOBTA thank you for the suggestion I think that there will there probably won’t be expanding that group but we can propose it we can propose that we can bring that up would someone take some notes so that we have would you down Thanks so thank you for that suggestion we will present it I like I don’t want to be a wet blanket but I think that there is no I’ve talked to the coalition about expanding membership and adding other organizations there hasn’t been a lot of support for that but we can bring it up again so you’d like to hear more of the detail of the deliberations okay I asked for this write down it is attendance is not open it’s there are two representatives potentially from each of the seven organizations that meet one of the agreements and the rules of the the process is that we don’t share deliberations we don’t share discussion that we do share agreements that we that we decide to release so what you get is this short little summary of say one or two things that that the group came together to agree on and personally I would rather be more transparent and I would rather share more of the process but the rules of the organization preclude that so what we would have to do is challenge those rules and say we need to be more transparent and we can bring that up at the next meeting and bat it around again about transparency dawn also attends that meeting representing comforta with cliff corn and if you guys have any comments you know that various what I’m saying how I’m representing what goes on at then those meetings and what the kind of the rules of the road are please share it but would you say that I’m representing it accurately Dawn Cliff MK Doug yeah Doug’s there – Charlie where’s Charlie they should be no there she is right Charlie’s there would you say Charlie that I’m representing it accurately okay all right so now if you have more ideas after this discussion today you’re not limited to just speaking up now we want you to share your ideas on going on any of the topics that we bring up and you know coalition is the first one we were but if you have a thought later please share it Michael it’s a good point and it is one that we have discussed I would say last year not this may but may have 18 we talked about the AMTA’s public relations campaign that was largely on pain management and that that was an attempt to educate the public to reach out I would say that organizations that have a larger budget have a greater capacity for outreach because it takes money just to get a message out there but we’re all concerned about that and have discussed how we can do that and so that’s well taken that point any other thoughts about the coalition carry and I’m very concerned about the future of massage and bodywork education in the United States because there seems to be resistance to growth in education there seems to be a commitment to 600 or 625 our limitation and that the idea of degree programs are not welcomed the idea of an AAS or an AAS or an A or B a or moving into that with support is we’re getting a lot of resistance and I think this this group should be very concerned about the limitations being put on an hourly you know being mandated to only an hourly structure where we have competencies between Compton and a lap there’s competency-based education that can in form what schools do better than ours and we need to look to the higher levels of education as to what the medical field might want us to be in being partners with them having degree programs and that seems to be not part of the programs of the professional organizations and I’m very worried about that I share your concern Kerry I think the member associations endorsed the governor of the eel app number of 625 at or in sometimes it’s state regulation and they’re not supportive of a competency-based law to to outline on a state-by-state basis what how the massage education is practiced in their in their state so yeah unfortunately the the the organization sponsored eel app and felt that if we now endorse a position that contradicts that which we very recently by historical standards you know mandated the 6:25 then we’re contradicting ourselves was that was the general discussion so I I personally and I think a lot of us from what’s been said in the like in the survey and and the research that Nicki and Diane did was that there is a concern that we need to raise the standard of Education and to meet with you know the inclusion in the health care system higher education standards are more called for and that contradicts this idea of a 625 that’s a fine for starting but maybe if we had a multi-tiered way of setting up you know different levels of training and that you know the 625 maybe meets the entry level but for entry level and to healthcare it could be higher you know hospital work that sort of thing anyway yeah I don’t think anything has to contradict the île app or com2us standards I think that we need to have a way to include growth in our profession beyond just specialty certificates or continuing education because I think we need people wanting higher level of education and those are the people that may be moving us forward and really getting us into the health delivery system we need a way forward for those who want to raise the standards I agree and I done you got that in in the note sure to agree with you Carrie and that’s why Compton has the competencies that we do but I would like to just reinforce that that 600 or 625 is a minimum of a minimum of and so with that then there is the inherent encouragement for more than but when when I hear that comment it makes my mind just connect many dots that relate to things we’ve talked about already in the last couple of days are we a profession are we a vocation what is our professional identity and where do we go with that from that and from the exercise that we did yesterday are there going to be employment opportunities that will then be able to support the cost of that additional education and so it’s just a you know it’s it’s a matrix of things I don’t think it all boils down to the hours but what are then the secondary things that come from that and there is receptivity and openness to continuing to have those conversations I think everyone in this room on the stage and I can say that everyone at the coalition is in support of the professional growth of of and you might disagree based on your experience in Minnesota but in a broader picture I feel certain that I can say that on behalf of the coalition so thank you for bringing that forward though Terry would like just to follow up on that and kind of bringing up about getting the public educated on this too is as an enrollment process with many of the schools the students are looking how fast they can get through school get their you know get that get started so possibly kind of tandem these two thoughts of educating the public on the importance of higher education and then have the higher education available does that make sense that we have to make sure these students because a lot of my students out how consumed can I get done and you know is it’s a 10 months is it twelve months can I get out of school how fast can I get done and get out to work and starting to educate them on the importance of cup stepping up those levels of what’s available and I love what Don said about the employment opportunities we have to get employers willing to pay for these higher education processes so I want to move on but I noticed you have your hand up and I’d like her to speak it how many more are out there that wanted to speak Whitney and in this lady Regina and okay and in hello all right so let’s let’s try to take at most three or four more and then let’s move to the next topic go ahead okay so I’m I’m concerned about how it seems like we don’t look to other professions to see how they’ve done things and and that when we do we look at other manual therapy professions and I’m curious why we’re not looking at psychologists and social workers and the model that they use with supervision and really building a mentorship community that it wouldn’t occur to you to just walk out of Social Work school and start seeing people that’s ludicrous but that’s what we do in massage and we just had my organization just did we’ve been doing a monthly webinar series and last month we talked about the future of education and the future of the profession and one of the last questions we got was who’s driving this and I think that we just pointed to who’s driving it is people who think that they should be able to have a career after nine months and why are we saying that’s okay why are we meeting the demands of people who want a quick job and the last thing I’ll say is that we were just teaching in British Columbia a few months ago and I’m not I don’t want to invite obviously open debate because we’re in a limited time and there could be fists thrown but in Kent in British Columbia at least they’re regulated and unregulated and so you get minimal training and you can give people a good rub or you can be a health care provider these are two ways that you can make a living and these are two ways the public can access manual therapy it’s really clear you either have a lot of training or you have very basic training and as a consumer that’s a really easy system for me to see it makes a lot of sense following following along with Lawrence said what you’re getting at stand two I’d like to ask when the Coalition gets together and meets we’ve been tiptoeing around this idea of tiered credentialing for a couple of decades at least and we need to like get on something and so my request is when the next when the Coalition meets I’d like to since we’re talking about strategic planning is I’d like to know if everybody on the coalition can get together and decide that we need to actually do something about this and if so maybe we can start working on a strategic plan for what that would look like potentially with organism or a tiered level for a personal care service massage therapists that would not need to go through extensive training but a more significant level of training for those that want to work in the healthcare professions because it’s been obvious for deck that we need to do this and we keep tiptoeing around and saying we need to do something we need to do something we never do anything so if the coalition can get together and say ok we finally need to actually make a plan and start working on this I think it would really be very beneficial for the current and future of the profession hi I’m Regina and I just wanted to just to say that I’ve been working for the Community College for over 19 years been comped accredited for since 2004 and what my concern is that when I first started I was the only school that had a associate’s degree and in many schools in New England had associate’s degree or or community colleges what saddens me right now is that there are we’re losing community colleges and in my area we’ve lost already five and is there knocking on the door trying to do things to my program because they don’t see the profession going anywhere and and I’m very concerned about when we talk about increasing education this community college we don’t have any more programs now in massage and that is a big concern because I think we’re what we’re talking about we’re a little bit late now and I don’t know how to bring it back to the community colleges and I I would like more support from our organizations to help promote the colleges that are doing the work that I’ve been doing for 19 years and other colleges that the community colleges they’re here because we have lots of struggles and it’s lots of politics that are in there and we need support from our organizations to help us stay alive thank you [Applause] is it okay can I cut off that phase and go to the next topic this this one we could talk about this for a while I think we’re only going to have about seven more minutes in this phase of the meeting and then we we need to move on but the next thing I would like to try to talk about is teacher certification is something that we have been working on with the national teacher education standards project working and eventually implementation of the requirement for certified teachers in the in the massage schools in the seee classroom but that’s going to take implementation of state laws change changes in state laws and accreditation standards so phase 5 of event 2 ESP is complicated because it’s it’s it’s a political process and it’s largely out of our control as this small organization one of the things the criticisms that I’ve heard is that gee I hope we’re not putting all of our eggs in this one basket and and what happens if that doesn’t like catch fire and and become a well accepted thing in the massage profession so is are you concerned that were too focused on teacher certification and potentially teacher training which will be a way to prepare people for certification are there other things that you think we should be focused on besides those two major next efforts teacher certification teacher training to raise the quality massager education what would you have us do besides those things just lady in the back she’s gonna bring you a mic if we don’t have any students it’s not going to matter I would really like to see the coalition support public education about the profession thank you the other concern is you just said if it’s largely out of your control in terms of the state’s really making this happen in the political process why is it such a strategic part of the plan if really can’t control it and to the other point is yes if there are no students and the schools are diminishing what does it matter if we are certified well if I can speak to that it matters if you are better trained to yourself it matters to your students it matters to your school as people become you know educated to the value of certified teachers it will matter more and more to the public and people who are coming to schools if their schools have certified teachers it will be a better way of marketing that school because they’re offering an enhanced education compared to others potentially so I mean we we knew this was baseball was was going to be a political process from the beginning though yeah we undertook it anyway because we think there’s value even if it doesn’t get changed quickly in the political realm hi I apologize if it sounds like I’m reiterating what’s already been said but I think what it comes down to is three different aspects of educating the consumer and what massage really is and what it can do for them educating our potential students on where they can go to school such as our community colleges that it’s not just you know court Eva and big organizations that offer massage education but that community colleges offer a great massage education and promoting that and then also encouraging students you know to go that route and supporting those community colleges you know in promotion of those programs so I think that it’s really those three aspects that go into and you know educating the teachers getting the teachers better at those community colleges and throughout the schools but you know promoting to the students that there is this community college aspect because I think that they look to just massage schools and don’t realize that the community colleges do have great programs it’s not what the consumer is looking for you know they don’t think community college when they think where should go to massage school they think massage school so I think that we have three different aspects that need to be covered you know where where school is available what you’re looking for where who might go to get that massage why they need a massage you know not always a doctor you know if it’s not something to cut off or medicate that they might need a massage and you know that that we need to promote those we need we need more education of the consumer thank you I think we need to support state reciprocity and a national standard for state licensing across borders the biggest problem while we all have great schools but we’re all teaching to us whatever our state is mandating you know they were able to adopt one exam for testing nationwide why can’t we adopt a national curriculum so that way a student who goes to school in Minnesota can move to Texas and not have to reinvent the wheel and have to go back to school which is a frustrating you know prospect there’s a few states out there and unfortunately my state’s one of them I know we’re guilty of it because of the standards that we have so I actually would like to see the Federation since they have such a strong connection with the state boards to work on that as well as working with educators and trying to create that to make that happen let me say that there is a pathway to that and it’s if we made programmatic accreditation a requirement for all massage programs and then the Compton level type of standards became the the entry point for a school or the requirement then you wouldn’t have to change 50 state laws you just have one policy change and require accreditation the standards would take care of the rest does that make sense I think one of the other things that you’re asking for other things you can bring up your attention to right and I believe that it’s not just educating students about coming into our schools but what are the opportunities when they graduate is it always going to be 25 hours a week period no full-time positions or how can we help our employers to create full-time positions with all the benefits you know time off health dental whatever so that to me would be more the way to attract more people to our industry that’s what I think is lacking and that’s what we hear from well what can okay how much can I make oh is that all are there benefits well very few you know and they say they have benefits but it’s not really that type of profession it looks like a part-time profession right now and that I think could improve that’s a good point I we need to to cut this discussion this you know there’s a lot of creative thoughts in this room and a lot of ideas that we’re just skim skim the surface again to hear from you on this so I again want to encourage you please continue to think and share your ideas with if you email AFM te org or Naomi the board will it’ll come to our attention and we will consider your thoughts try to integrate them into our strategic plan and into our interactions with the coalition so thanks for your input during this process so far today things

Okay now the fun part fun because it’s a joy to give this award to this person the President’s Award was established to recognize outstanding service by a member or members in support of the Alliance mission and goals the president is authorized to choose recipients and his or her discretion that’s an honor to be able to do I can say the award is designed to acknowledge the good works of a member so in pursuit of my authority to to acknowledge the good works of a member I chose Debra Curties now there are some points on the slide but you cannot have enough slides with points of praise and productivity and accomplishments honors you know we’ve said I mean Debra co-owns and is the executive director of the Sutherland Chan School of Massage in Toronto right but in 2010 when we elected our first LDC group Debra was elected she became the chair I think chosen by the committee or were you elected the chair she was appointed the board appointed her chair okay well she’s been the first and only chair of the LDC since this entire operation this organization began and I have to say that the LDC is literally the root system of this organization if we are a healthy functioning organization it is largely due to the contribution of the LDC in thing they feed all of the committee members they have renewed the board annually with a slate of new board members that they put on the slate and that have been elected by acclamation virtually every time wisely Wesley because it was a very painstaking process to select that slate and Debra has presided over that process the entire time that this organization existed I can say that she is the best chair of any committee probably in the history of this entire profession not just this organization if you if you have a committee that you want to run smoothly to be well organized and the meetings run well to develop the right culture of collegial discussion she’s your your woman your person she is beloved by her committee it’s not just respected or the oh she does a good job it’s gushingly almost embarrassing for her I’m sure to hear how beloved she is by her committee members well pardon me that was me yeah that was a pretty loud heartbeat I I actually am almost moved to tears when I think about the kind of love that Debra has inspired in her committee there just aren’t words to say how strongly your people feel about you and think you know not only do you do a good job but in and run things well but you’re just so perfectly suited to run this committee and run the discussions and it takes a comprehensive understanding of so many things to do the LDC’s work they not only have to know people in the community they have to be familiar with what’s going on in the board what what are the needs of the board and then they need to meet the people and figure out their interest in how much time they have and what skills they have and there’s a matching of what the needs are with what the the candidates skills are and their availability and it’s an art there’s some science to it but a lot of it is judging character which if you’ve ever had to hire a staff how many hires get our just right I mean they don’t all work out you know when you’re hiring folks but the percentage of things working out in this organization has been very high largely because of the work of the committee but in great measure two different leadership she is also an author she’s written a book on breast massage and one massage therapy and cancer she has a publishing company heard her he’s over set publications the AMTA many years ago had the good sense to award her the Council of schools Meritorious Service Award when the AMTA had a Council of schools she’s been involved in the profession at a level of volunteer level that’s very high for a long time and she it’s far past time that she’s acknowledged for her great contribution to the Alliance I’d like Debra to come forward and to address she has a few remarks to make and when I have an award for her that I’m going to give you and that little envelope over there so Debra would you please come up and make some remarks [Applause]

Thank you so much everybody and thanks Stan stan has been great to work with one of the things that he hasn’t said is that the Leadership Committee Leadership Development Committee and you know me as chair needs are really good ongoing rapport with the president and the executive committee and members of the board and I really do feel that it’s that dialogue and that ongoing kind of collaborative effort that really keeps this organization going and I just want to really thank Stan for being so great to work with thank you and of course for choosing me for this award I certainly appreciate it and I’m well aware that this is it’s such a great honor and I truly truly do feel humbled and appreciative to receive it thinking about what they wanted to say and I’m just gonna speak briefly but I was looking back on when I started out in the kind of organizational realm for massage therapy educators and it’s back to the early days of the Council of schools where and there’s a few people in the room I think who will remember this but it’s a very small organization independent at the time altom utley not financially self-supporting enough to to move forward but we would sit around how there’s iris we would sit around a kind of rectangular table and there would be like 30 or 40 of us and we would spend several days debating the issues of the day and massage therapy education and that forum was so important we you know we ended up having the earlier discussions about accreditation and other things but that that place to dialogue and debate and really kind of form position in terms of being a leadership voice and massage therapy education was so important and a lot of ways like you know we had a taste of it you know as we were just talking today and and some of the things that were said yesterday in the the exercises since that those days which were many years ago now we’ve seen a lot of growth and a lot of development in the profession and a lot of changes in massage therapy education and you know I I’m part of the group that sees the positives in that and sees some of the major concerns about whether the profession is going and how healthy the future the profession is and where massage therapy education is going and for me I think it’s so important to say we need an organization like the Alliance that can take up the mantle of being that voice right it’s not only providing services to members which are is very important it’s not only providing resources but we need a forum for debate and discussion and we need a leadership voice and I think the Alliance you know despite being a young organization has a lot of potential to continue to to become that voice and become a strong and sort of powerful part of the various conversations that go on that helped us establish and expand you know where we want the profession to go so to me having been involved with the Alliance from the beginning the the commitment from my viewpoint was to always try to be part of organizations that are taking up the mantle of being that voice having been involved in the Alliance since its very beginnings and this is back in Park City right where we started in in 2010 for me personally it’s also being a lot of fun I mean I think one of the things that we we think about in the Alliance’s in the leadership development committee in particular is that it’s really important for volunteers you know cuz those were largely volunteers here right moving an important organization forward it’s really important to feel like the the volunteer work you’re doing matches your skills and matches your interests and is also important as meaningful and one of the things that I particularly enjoy is being around at the beginnings and sort of early development stages of organizations it just really interest me you know what does the organization need what are the resources it needs early on right what is how does it grow into its sense of purpose how does it build the team that it needs to move forward what are the policies and what are the visions and you know how do we get all those things in place and and then kind of get our legs under us and then stumble forward which is certainly what the Alliance did you know what a lot of organizations do especially at the beginning and then you know picking up on where those weak spots are and you know talking to others about you know what do we need to do next and who are the right kind of people to be in the leadership roles next and all that really kind of interesting and fun to me and so being a part of a team that helped move this organization forward was really gratifying and kind of yes leaned on my strengths to some extent but also really helped me grow and understand and learn new things in a way that’s always a really good thing to be part of the LDC and I just want to pause for a minute here and acknowledge you know we’ve had members over the years Joe Lubow and Tim Herbert and I would also say Su Bibik and Tracy Walton as the kind of key long-term members of the group were always more than just colleagues it was really all about colleagues with a shared sense of purpose but also really good friends and great people to work with and so much of this you know it is not just about me it’s about the the chemistry within the LDC and how we’ve moved our work forward so thank you so much really really appreciate it can’t see where sue is also I want to acknowledge people who weren’t on the group as long but it definitely made important contributions Susan back I don’t know if any of these people are in the room Lisa Curran parent Oh David Lauder Steen Nancy Leavitt and we’ve also had a number of board liaisons Stan Pete Christa Bev and Dawn all of being great to work with and very much part of the team at at every moment my sense of you know what I’ve learned and what the Alliance has given me is because I’m kind of a bit more of a thinker than a people person I my orientation is to kind of think about the organization and to think about the you know the the sort of pieces that come next and all of that and what I’ve learned partly from running a school for many years but also partly from being part of this organization is that those things are all good the vision is good the plans are good the the ideas are good the sense of purpose is good but ultimately it is about the people and none of that actually moves forward if the right people don’t step up and if the that the Serve group doesn’t come forward with the people resources that are needed and from me you know recognizing that and really internalizing that as being a big pieces of learning that the Alliance has sort of afforded me and so you know ultimately you know what we’ve come to then is kind of a perfect and always engaging match for me in terms of my volunteering in the organization and Stan said it a little bit earlier that what do we need and where are we going and who are the people that are going to be in you know the ones that we can look at and talk to you and see if we can get them in the right places to move organization for it that sort of matchmaking role so you know finding the people who will move the organization forward in the ways that are needed in that moment has always been really gratifying because there’s so many dedicated talented people in this organization so this organization is actually a great place to be a matchmaker in that sense because so many of you have leadership skills and experience and resources to come together and serve move this forward and really honestly whenever we’ve really needed to find people those people have been there so thank you to you thanks again for this great honor and I am very mindful that I share that with the LDC as a whole and you know appreciate it and love you guys and thank you for making me look good [Applause] [Music] we’re a little over schedule but there is one more thing all right we’re gonna wait on that we’re we’re going to go now to Deanna and so board let’s exit the stage whichever side you want and make room for Deanna’s report thank you everyone for attending and thanks for the acclamation for the new elected folks