When each and every president said to me “the year goes by really fast” I never really got it until now. It is so true and what an incredible year it has been.
In my incoming president’s speech I used the term, “if not now, when”…and this is the mantra that I repeated throughout the year to keep not only myself on track but also to keep the association focused on its goals. The time has come to start embracing CREA’s futures planning, start taking action, and start making decisions.
I am incredibly proud of my board of directors, who made a very conscious effort to change the way we make decisions at the Association. We streamlined our meetings to allow us to remain at high level of discussion on important strategic issues; we empowered staff and became more efficient.
This allowed us to move forward and make good decisions for our members and the future of our organization. I was truly blessed to have support from an amazing group of directors. Your dedication this year was awesome, thank you for supporting me personally, professionally and unequivocally.
We also set some lofty goals for ourselves this year and I am so pleased to have seen those initiatives and creative ideas come to fruition.
The Home Ownership Matters campaign was the brainchild of the brilliant staff in our government relations department. The campaign was well thought out, beautifully executed and accomplished what we set out to do: help our members with their lobbying efforts and raising the profile of our organization. I was very proud of this initiative.
Our social media presence at the association has exploded. The opportunity it provides for communication with our members is phenomenal. Again, it is the amazing staff at OREA that makes all this happen so thanks to all of you at OREA for embracing new technologies and bringing us that much closer to the people who matter to us most…our members.
Creation of the Young Professionals Network at OREA has proven to be a huge success with their kick off event happening on February 28th. These members are the future of the profession, the next generation of leaders.
I think that my proudest moment this year has been all the work that was done on the “Promoting Realtor Value” Campaign. When asked, our members said the single most important function OREA could perform for them was promoting professionalism and REALTOR® value. I personally put my heart and soul into the campaign. It was very important to me to be good spokesperson and to deliver that message to as many consumers and members as possible.
I had a lot of fun doing it, suffered a few anxiety attacks along the way but got pretty good at being in front of the camera in the end. It was a blast and thanks to the Communication department this year for all their hard work.
Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to have represented you over the past year. It is from the bottom of my heart that I say thank you for the opportunity, I am incredibly proud to be a REALTOR® and even more proud to have been the president of this great organization!
– Barb Sukkau, OREA Past President
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