Since you are reading this, the most appropriate thing to say is thank you for your service in your bar associations this year and throughout the years. I have loved serving as your NCWBA president this year and to watch you and your organizations.   Promoting women has truly become my passion. There have been so many monumental anniversaries for our organizations this year, and it is fun to see you grow and mature and at the same time gather so many new and young lawyers into your organizations. Please continue not only to collectively promote our bar associations but also the individual women in them. I have had the opportunity this year to personally nominate over 100 women for various awards, write letters in support of women in politics and women for judgeships. I have been able to publicly and privately work for better court rules and laws for women. I've taught women how to serve on civic and nonprofit boards. I am especially grateful to have been given opportunities to speak in grade schools, high schools and colleges on the importance of women, education and service. I was able to help put together a full-page ad in our local newspaper celebrating Kansas' ratification of the 19th amendment and a coloring contest in our local schools. It truly does matter that our communities see that women lawyers are a significant backbone of our communities. I encourage you and your organizations to find more ways that you can promote women and teach our girls and young women how to promote each other. I love every time that I see the internet meme that says: Here is to strong women. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.  

I am a huge advocate of R&R - not rest and relaxation but of return and report.  In my capacity as your president I have been able to represent you at conferences, host a community-wide GOOD Guys program in my home state, and have our firm help host a Food From the Bar food drive. We combined with several organizations to host a phenomenal mid-year GOOD guys program in Vegas. It was exciting to see our own members putting on GOOD Guys programs and hosting Food From The Bar drives. It has been an immense pleasure to get the opportunity to work with the Law Society of England and Wales both last year and this year and to continue to strengthen our ties with our Canadian sisters-in-law. The big task of the year was to oversee the nationwide search for our new executive director who would continue our passion for promoting women and that we did. I am so grateful for all the tutelage of Diane Rynerson, our retiring executive director, and her request and dedication that we celebrate and document our histories with a glossy magazine celebrating 150 years of women in law. We have hosted conference calls and webinars and we have added ZOOM for our board meetings. (I highly suggest visual board meetings when you cannot meet in person.) I have loved serving with our amazing board of directors and documenting policy, protocol, and procedure. It has been fun to "Spark a 'change' reaction" with you this last year and look forward to seeing you in San Francisco this year as we celebrate, "Accelerating the 'change' reaction" I especially look forward in seeing the fruition of all our 19th Amendment celebrations in 2020. NCWBA is an amazingly awesome organization in the promotion of women in law. Please continue your membership and encourage others to join and please consider serving on the board: we need your strength and enthusiasm.

PROGRAM OFFERINGS

TIP FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Create a list of awards and their respective due dates of all your local, state and national bar associations. Also create a list of local and statewide community service and achievement awards. Not only seek to award women internally each year with your organization awards but to nominate your members for awards in the other organizations they belong to and for community, statewide and national awards. Assign a committee tasked with submitting nominations for awards. These submissions do not have to come from the organization itself but from individuals who volunteer to make their own submissions on behalf of the women they nominate.

TIP FOR YOU

Graciously accept awards. I have really grown to understand that accepting an award is not self-promotion but community promotion. We owe it to our sisters-in-law to be seen as beacons of light and hope in our communities.