Thanks to all who joined us at our Winter Networking Event at the Met! The new location was a hit, and we were able to share our year's successes and celebrate with our membership! See below for the President's address and appreciation to the Board, along with some images from the event. Looking forward to a fantastic 2017!.

We have had a fantastic year with great events, great professional development, great community involvement and some great global recognition. Please allow me a few moments to thank our current board and to introduce our newest board members.
 
I would like to thank Julia Corvino for her very busy and successful term as the VP of Member Events. She has introduced a variety of new events in her tenure including webinars and lunch and learns. By adding lunch events we are able to satisfy our members that are unable to easily attend after-work events. We are also able to build our knowledge base with webinar recordings. We have held some fantastic events and brought in top-caliber speakers including Jas Phul from IIBA Central and Sandy Foster from Capstone Ridge Group. We thank her for her enthusiasm and attention to detail. Julia is moving in to the role of VP at Large to support our new VP of Member Events, Barb Davidson.
 
I would like to thank Michael Aldor, VP of Professional Development and board member with the most tenure for another exciting year. Michael has brought in Kupe Kupersmith to deliver a great workshop on Stakeholder Engagement among many great workshops over many years for the IIBA Winnipeg Chapter. During his terms we have had 3 Winnipeg BA World events. In addition to this, Michael has contributed to the growth of certified members by 50% including a huge 30% increase just last year. The study group program is a great success. Michael is also moving to the role of VP at Large and will support our new VP of Professional Development, James Fatoki.
 
Mel Love has raised the Treasury to new heights with her passion and attention to detail. Not only has Mel brought the books up to best practices, her drive to have a balanced budget is a huge asset to our organization. We have been able to properly plan and execute against our budget and have a much better picture of our cash flow. Mel's drive for excellence was recently recognized as a significant factor for recent awards received by our chapter. Mel has also asked probing questions and helped to ensure we are receiving maximum value for every dollar spent. We thank Mel for her contributions over her term and wish her the best as she focuses her energies on her accounting designation. Mel is already actively working to transition her role to our new Treasurer, Randy Radic.
 
Thank you to Jeremy Leduc for his great performance as the Chapter Secretary. With all of the initiatives underway and many moving parts, Jeremy is always on top of the next steps and helps to keep everything running smoothly. Jeremy has been very reliable and shares the passion on the IIBA wherever he goes. Jeremy recently achieved his CBAP certification and has thankfully agreed to help keep us in line for another 2 years! Thank you for continuing to serve the board for another term, Jeremy!
 
We bid a fond farewell to Craig Richer, VP at Large, as he sets sail for Hawaii. Craig has been a very valuable member of the board and willingly took on many tasks such as the member data migration of the new platform. He has been a great ambassador for the IIBA and has helped to bring Sierra as a sponsor of the Winnipeg Chapter. Craig has a fantastic attitude and provided great suggestions and assistance to other board members. Craig recently achieved his CBAP and was a big help for others going through the application process. I know Craig will be an asset to the Hawaii Chapter which is brand new and very active.
 
Dean Zarrillo has been extremely busy this with a huge platform migration. Dean is our Communications champion and has taken on the enormous task of migrating our old sites to the new platform. This meant bringing over content, data and building the site from scratch. Dean also leads all of the communication tasks such as promoting events, promoting job opportunities, promoting professional development, board activities and participation in the community. The Winnipeg Chapter Twitter account has been quite active and the social media channels are just another way we connect with our community. Dean has a great attitude and is always willing to lend a hand or lead an initiative. Big thanks to Dean for going above and beyond this year for the board.
 
I would also like to thank those board members who are in their mid-term. Phil Kaleta has grabbed the role of Sponsorship by the reins and has doubled the number of sponsors and done a great job to ensure we have happy sponsors. Phil is a champion of the sponsorship program and did a fabulous job of providing leadership for the June Job Fair by building relationships with organizations to sponsor the event as exhibitors. He ensured the event ran smoothly and that exhibitors were well-cared for by the Winnipeg Chapter. Phil also has a gift with digital images and has been a huge help with managing our portfolio of images. Thank you, Phil!
 
We are fortunate to have Vineet Jaiswal leading our marketing efforts. With a flair for crafting a message and building our image, Vineet continues to drive our visibility and ensure we have a consistent message. The tagline Learn | Grow | Share is visible on our booth, our presentations, our brochure and promotional items. Vineet has been critical to launching our Newsletter and continues to build on our message to our community. Vineet has been very involved in developing our brand and getting the message out to students, employers and practitioners. We thank him for all of his efforts and look forward to hearing and seeing more about the IIBA Winnipeg Chapter in 2017.
 
Absar Islamullah,VP of Membership, has had the challenging task of ensuring the platform migration and all of the member data was executed properly. We thank him for taking on this task and working diligently to keep information updated. With the challenges of a new platform come some growing pains. Absar continues to work through these challenges and brings forward great ideas to help improve on the process. The membership survey recently completed will help to ensure we are focusing on the tasks that add the most value. We will also do our best to make the sign up and renewal process as painless as possible. As we work to grow our membership, this will continue to be a very important role for Absar. Thank you!
 
Denise Brockman, VP at Large, continues to help a wide range of teams. Denise most recently stepped up to ensure the IIBA dinner at BA World was properly executed. She was a huge help to Julia while Julia was out of town to ensure the event was a success. Denise was able to dig into a number of special requests such as assisting with the member platform migration and other costing requests. Denise continues to bring her great attitude and willingness help to the board and we are very grateful.
 
Another big round of applause for our 2016 Board Members, please. We welcome 4 new members to our board. As I mentioned earlier, Barb Davidson is the new VP of Member Events, James Fatoki is the new VP of Professional Development and Randy Radic is our new Treasurer. I would also like to introduce Sanjeev Pathak as VP at Large. I look forward to working with these 4 new members and I am confident we will have another spectacular year. I encourage you to get to know our board and feel free to share ideas and ask questions.
 
Finally, I want to share some great news for those of you that may not have heard. We recently won 2 very prestigious chapter awards. We were recently recognized at the Building Business Capability conference in Las Vegas by the President of the Central IIBA and the executive leadership team. We have won the Sustainability Award and the President’s Award (Tier 1).
IIBA President’s Award
Presented to the Chapter that has demonstrated strong leadership, innovation, engagement and overall promotion and advancement of the BA profession. 
Excellence in Chapter Sustainability Award
Presented to the Chapter that demonstrates the most successful Chapter Sustainability Model
  
I was very honoured to represent our Chapter at the award ceremony. I was also very pleased to share the successes of our past year with other chapter leaders and they were eager to take some of our ideas back to their chapters. As we continue to grow as a community and aim to provide excellence to our Chapter I look forward to another exciting year. Thank you very much to the board and our community for making 2016 such a resounding success.
 
A special thanks to our Silver sponsors: Red River College and Sierra Systems; our Gold Sponsors: Capstone Ridge Group, Manitoba Public Insurance, Norima Consulting, Paradigm and Solvera; and our Platinum Sponsor: Online Business Systems
 
Kevin