Dear NYSAE Members and Friends,

Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday? At NYSAE (Kellen) Headquarters, we celebrated the theme of “togetherness and gratitude” with a pot luck lunch. When we gathered around the table eating the delicious food everyone prepared, we all shared what we were grateful for this past year—both professionally and personally. One of the items on my “thankful” list was the opportunity to manage the day-to-day operations of NYSAE with an incredibly talented team around me.

After all, when I was a young professional starting out and looking for education and peer mentoring, I was lucky to work for a company that encouraged and supported me to actively join NYSAE. The experience inspired and motivated me to continue in this wonderful world of association management. Here I am 30 years later, and I fully appreciate and relate to the smiles I’m constantly seeing on the faces of our curious, hardworking and capable NYSAE team’s faces. Not that staff members weren’t equally motivated when we supported the Plastic Bag Association or the Certified Ballast Manufacturers, but there’s a big difference when you’re also enjoying the industry you support and, in this case, the many rewards of working for NYSAE – learning every day from the seasoned professionals and volunteer leaders we come in contact with. Thanksgiving may be behind me now, but I already know that at next year’s pot luck lunch, NYSAE and its members will show up on the list again.

 

Warm Regards,

Holly Koenig