Category: Letter from the President

June is upon us, and it brings with it the warmth of summer and the excitement of a new season. As we reflect on the past month, I cannot help but feel a sense of pride and gratitude for the success of our chapter meeting and scholarship celebration.

As we approach our May chapter meeting, I am excited to celebrate our upcoming scholarship celebration! This is a time for us to come together and recognize the hard work and dedication of our scholarship recipients. These young scholars are the future leaders of our community, and we are proud to support their education and career goals.

An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow. On April 17, 1979, EWI of Spokane became the 73rd chapter to charter with Executive Women International, a national organization already built on decades upon decades of firms and member representatives dedicated to leadership development and community impact.

This month is Women’s History Month, where we celebrate the countless women who have fought tirelessly and courageously for equality, justice, and opportunity in our nation.

Thank you to Jene Ray, Northeast Community Center for hosting our January Chapter meeting. It was a wonderful meeting and reminded me just how important the mission of EWI is. Promoting member firms, enhancing personal and professional development, and encouraging community involvement.

The past year was full of ups, downs, and sideways. I often find stepping into a new year brings a breath of fresh air. As I reflect on 2022, I found myself smiling, thinking of all that our Chapter has accomplished and given back to our community. The past year was filled with wonderful events, meetings, and real connections made.

As our November guest speaker Larry Krauter taught us, I’ve taken on a new meaning of the term bleasure: business, and leisure. The idea of mixing business trips and events with leisure sounds like something we all need more of, especially as we enjoy the holidays this season with family and friends.

I’m not sure about you, but the last meeting had me energized right from the beginning, with a wonderful inspiration by Elizabeth Arnold from Avista. She spoke so eloquently about perseverance and the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.

If I’ve learned one thing over the past few years, it’s this: when life slows down, I feel a greater pull to fill my time with priorities that genuinely mean something to me. Am I spending time and energy on emotionally draining things or restoring my zest and compassion for life?

It feels surreal to me that this is my final President’s Message. I started to re-read my earlier letters, and what emerged was a common denominator. The natural guess would be EWI – what business we were attending to, important reminders, organizational necessities, and other timely updates. Everything that you would expect. And you would be right.

I’ve just returned home from an impromptu 24-hour visit to Seattle. It was a blur of a day with my husband’s family, but a rare visit by two nephews gave us (nearly 25 of us) an informal reason to come together and spend time. 

While unusually wet and rainy this year in the Inland NW, during the 4th of July holiday weekend, people across America gathered to eat, drink, laugh, celebrate and enjoy their freedom; unselfishly provided to us by a countless number of brave souls, past and present. As I sat down to write this article, my memories drifted to the friends and family that have served this country gallantly, including both of my grandfathers, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my own father. I thought about the word “freedom” – what it means to me, to my family and to this community.

I don’t know about most of you, but lately, I find myself more often than not saying, “I can’t believe it’s June already! Where has the first half of this year gone?” In conversations, it feels like we are all being pulled in so many directions. Between our personal and professional lives, we’ve had our head down (maybe to avoid all of the rain this spring), relentlessly pushing forward just to keep up. I know I have.

May is a special month. For Spokane, a sense of normalcy covered the town as Bloomsday returned in-person, renewing nostalgic feelings of community. In the days following, we celebrated teachers for the profound impact they have had on young lives.

Birth. Death. Celebration. Remembrance. Anniversary.

It may not come as a surprise, but in the dictionary, the word anniversary translates to “the date on which an event took place in a previous year.” Of course, that’s true, but in my opinion, it’s an awfully dry explanation for a much more powerful meaning.

If last month’s amazing scholarship banquet taught me anything it is that investing in people—young people as well as people young at heart—is always the right thing to do. And that’s what EWI does. We invest not only in students who are setting the world on fire, but we are actively investing in each other and in this great community.