All things come in 3s, good or bad. In my years with BRMA, I’ve found this to be the case, more or less. This year alone, we’ve had 3 workplace violence events, 3 South Bay meetings, 3 members receiving conference passes, and filled 3 open Board positions for the upcoming year. Even our mission statement “to educate, inform and inspire people working in disciplines related to business continuity, organizational resiliency, and risk” -comes in threes! But today I’d love to talk to you about our one vital organization, and what it does to connect with so many more.
In education, we’ve exceeded our record of 14 events, with an extra special outing with ACP on the San Francisco Fire Department’s Fire Boat, a networking happy hour, and our first tech talk. On top of this, we welcomed 35new members and are working on introducing corporate memberships in 2020 so we can educate more members and their guests. A truly prolific output this year! Thank you to Renuka Darbha, and Robert Jones. We never stop learning as the challenges we face evolve; BRMA’s commitment to continuous learning has helped our members develop their skills to rise to those challenges.
They say that knowledge is power, and we get the privilege of empowering our members to share access to subject matter knowledge and increase awareness. We’ve introduced a summary of in-person meetings by members, and revamped our BRMA Brief. We’re all super proud of Tracy Knippenburg Gillis’ work on our fresh new logo and branded collateral. Our new and very elegant website makes us far easier to contact, and I have to thank Victor Vela for all his help! I am excited to see members making use of the website’s members-only offerings, writing articles and posting about conferences they’ve attended. We’ve also introduced Speaker Spotlights, so members can learn more about our presenters. All this in addition to our newsletter! By committing to “informing” as a main motivation, hopefully BRMA’s mission is spread beyond these walls.
Finally, “inspire”. I thought I’d talk about how you all have inspired me -with some more threes! Over my past 13 years with BRMA, and 3 years as President, I’ve learnt and grown so much and want to thank each and every Board member and Appointee for their support and dedication to making BRMA better for all members. We’ve rolled out our mentoring program after a successful pilot, helping inform and grow our community. We also launched BRMA Gives Back -a huge thank you to the several volunteers who spent a weekend on the ground in Paradisesupporting Butte County wildfire recovery efforts. It’s so important to build these connections both within and outside our community, networking to solve the problems of tomorrow.
As the fires rage across California and our climate crisis becomes ever more urgent, I’ve seen how we’ve all stepped up to make sure we can best support the companies and communities around us. I am confident, as my tenure draws to a close, that our new President will be excellent at picking up the mantle to continue to inspire change for the better. It’s been my honor to serve. Thank you again!
Fiona Raymond-Cox
BRMA President (2017-2019)
