submitted by Joe Brown

I am truly humbled and a bit awestruck to be the new President of this great organization. Each president of our organization begins their term with a vision of what they hope to accomplish during their term, and I am no different.

I am convinced that all organizations need to acknowledge that the world around us continues to change and if we are to remain relevant and vital, we need to make changes to reflect these new realities.

If we are interested in attracting the generation of young, dynamic leaders and if we hope to retain them we need to better reflect their world.

We can choose to ignore this fact, or we can take actions that may begin to halt the decline, or better still, see our numbers begin to grow. So to make this happen we all need to bring some ideas, something you have been thinking about, changes you would like to see take place, so plan to come to Oklahoma City in November for the 2008 Annual Meeting and bring your ideas. Lets get together and make our Empress better and have some fun too.