By Libby Taylor
In early August, 100 SWE Leaders congregated in Hartford, Connecticut, for a summit on SWE Governance and the proposed changes to our Society’s governance structure. The summit was the culmination of more than three years of work conducted by SWE Senators, Region Governors, Committee Chairs & members, Trustees & the Board of Directors that served on governance-related task forces and subgroups.
Hundreds of SWE volunteer work hours went into the development of the governance implementation plan and the goal of the meeting in Connecticut was to ensure FY18 SWE Senators, Region Governors, key Committee Chairs, Trustees & Board of Directors were onboard and ready to execute the plan.
The summit itself was a full day facilitated by Gabe Najera of Najera Consulting Group. Gabe is an engineer by training, along with being the co-founder and former President of the Chicago chapter of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). Gabe ensured the day was interactive, engaging & inclusive for all in attendance. He utilized a polling app with real time responses to gather the pulse of the room on the challenges, as well as advice & support SWE leaders need from each other to succeed through this transition.
After lunch, several SWE leaders were tapped to facilitate breakout sessions that discussed the following aspects of the implementation plan: Community Building, Leadership Pipeline, Bylaws Amendments, FY18 Action Plan, Section Support, Members at Large (MAL) Structure and Support and Nominating Committee. The output of these sessions were 3-4 actions that will be incorporated in the final version of the governance implementation plan. Each team presented a summary of their action plans to the overall summit for feedback and vetting. The plans shared were received with positive feedback and attendees found the summit to be collaborative, informative & engaging – as seen in the background of Gabe’s picture! The final implementation plan will be made available to the membership in September.
Check out more photos from the summit on SWE’s Flickr page.
