President's Message

Linda Howard, FGFOA President

The countdown is on! We are just 3 months away from our 2018 annual conference. There is so much happening between now and then. Let me give you a quick summary. We had three areas of focus: Training, Coaching and Communication (TCC).

TRAINING:

The first area of focus was training. The remaining CGFO Review sessions will be held between March 27 and April 10, ahead of the next exam scheduled for April 27, 2018. Next in line is our April 19 webinar, which will feature an economic update.   Right after that, we move into our Divergent series on April 20, where we will cover several topics related to IT and social media. After a mini break, we are tuned up and ready for our annual conference in Orlando from June 16-20, starting with the pre-conference sessions on June 16 and Boot Camp on Monday and Tuesday. You should have received your call to conference email last week.

The 3rd Leadership FGFOA class will be selected at our April 13 board meeting. This is always exciting. We look forward to see a new, eager, group of finance professionals ready to excel in knowledge so that they are better equipped to serve the governmental entities and their fellow co-workers. Stay tune for the announcement on this.

COACHING:

The second area of focus was our Coaching program. We made our goal of having 25 coaches/mentors and 25 mentees! I was really excited for the fact that I got a chance to meet my mentee in person while visiting the South Florida chapter. We do not take this program lightly and we know there will be huge dividends from those in this program, both coach and mentee.   Be listening. You should be hearing coaches and mentees talking about their success.

COMMUNICATION:

Our third and final area of focus was communication. To address this really big issues, we formed a new committee, the communications committee. Their main focus was to enhance communication with our members. The first big splash was our new website design. I know you will all agree that it looks much better than our old one. We also launched a new Facebook, Twitter and very recently, LinkedIn accounts. We have some work to do, but the foundation has been established. We need your feedback to let us know what’s working and what is not. 

I hope to see a record number of you in Orlando this June!