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Dear NMASLA members, Welcome to our first quarterly newsletter of 2020! I am elated to introduce myself to you all as your 2020-2022 president of NMASLA, and excited to share with everyone some of the positive changes we are implementing to make this organization even better for our state’s landscape architects, landscape architecture students, as well as our sponsors this year. Being transparent here, I was dropped into NMASLA like a paratrooper, having never served in any capacity on the Executive Committee (Excom). Two benefits emerged from this inexperience. One, there are some amazing veteran Excom members on our 2020 committee that have served multiple terms, and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that I can rely and lean upon. Two, I brought some fresh eyes (and some OCD!) into examining the organizational structure, so I could help recreate a more efficient way we all operate together, and to better stay on top of supporting our members. In the first month of my term at the end of 2019, I began by proposing reorganization strategies and centralized our operations in ‘the cloud’ so we could all have one point of connection for our internal committees, our sponsor tracking, events, and institutional knowledge moving forward. Being the ‘Chief IT Officer’ at my company (small business owners wear many hats!), I also worked over the holiday to update our nmasla.org website, including some general clean up and reorganization, but the biggest change was the creation of a Donor web page, so that our sponsors can more easily support our various events, email blasts, newsletters, etc, through single or monthly payment plans online, rather than just writing a check. For our quarterly events, we are reaching out to our allied partners to first ensure no conflicting events occur with theirs, but also to invite them to join us to network with our members. Even more cross collaboration with APA NM, ULI NM, AIA NM, USGBC NM, and others is our intent for this and the coming years. Our Quarter 1 event at SWAN Park has been postponed, unfortunately, due to our current world challenges, but it is our plan to reschedule it in early Summer, with hope that we can return to some sort of normalcy again soon. I hope you are getting our regular email blasts which are intended to make you aware of events, lectures, great new products from our sponsors, webinars, and seminars, many of which hold CEU opportunities for those that are licensed. Part of this cross collaboration with our allied partners helps us know what is out there to share with you. As your new president and paratrooper into this role, I want to let you know I am excited to shake things up together, and want to hear from you. Please feel free to email me with suggestions, compliments, or constructive criticism! I can be reached at kenneth@surroundings.studio, and please put NMASLA in as part of the subject line. I hope this letter finds each of you well in these challenging times. All my best, Kenneth Francis, NMASLA Chapter President
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