President's Message

Dear POWER,

I am writing as the current President of POWER with some exciting updates! I want to start off my note with a huge thank you to our two past Presidents, Emily Solari and Sara Hart, for all the amazing accomplishments they oversaw during their tenures, and for Hope Gerde stepping into the President Elect position, and Lori Skibbe now serving as VP of Finance.

I’m going to start with the most exciting update - POWER is now officially a non-profit organization! Looking towards the future, we will be focused on the long-term health of POWER. Although we have no plans to have membership fees so that we can reach as many members as possible, we have set up a method to accept donations to support POWER. Donating is of course completely optional and at this point funds will go to keep POWER up and running. As donations grow, we will make additional plans for donated funds – if you have any ideas please feel free to reach out! To donate, all you have to do is click the DONATE button on the POWER website.

We also now have POWER merch! The merch includes t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and tote bags - and the best part is a portion of the proceeds get donated to POWER. Visit the TeePublic website to order. I’ve purchased one of everything and love it all :). 

In the last two years, we have had additional exciting changes happen with POWER. We now have over 1000 members! We rolled out POWER Hubs, with the hope to bring more direct opportunities for connecting, supporting, and advocating to our membership. We have seen many of our members win awards, and just as importantly, members doing the hard task of asking to be nominated for awards or stepping up and nominating someone who was being missed. We have hosted numerous successful professional development and mentoring sessions. We continue to post new content to our resources page. We have hosted many virtual social events and in-person social events at conferences (so keep your eye out for information on events at upcoming conferences!). Our database continues to be a useful resource for finding collaborators, reviewers, nominees, and friends. Please use and recommend it to others.

All of our committees have opportunities for new members to join to help serve POWER, so look out for a call coming soon for volunteers. Please feel free to use our listserv, you can email [email protected] to post. We welcome new Hub applications, if you see a need for community around a topic or geographical area. Recommend each other for opportunities! And as always, we are open to feedback from our members.

Please continue to connect, support, and advocate for each other!
Jill Pentimonti