President’s Perspective

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Dear JLC Members and Friends,

I am glad you are here. We are coming out of a tough couple of years dealing with a global pandemic. During this time, you probably re-evaluated many things in your life, including where you want to be spending your valuable time. It’s important to me, and the JLC leadership, that we are delivering meaningful experiences for our members. We are reevaluating what is important to our members, asking for feedback and ideas, and developing both short term plans and longer term vision for this organization. I hope you had the opportunity to participate in or review a recap of our September GMM, where Past JLC President and current Vice President of the Association of Junior Leagues (AJLI), Michelle Vaeth, shared her Junior League journey and important AJLI updates. At this meeting, we voted to adopt a new mission statement. While the meaning behind our mission has not wavered, the language has been modernized. We also presented new JLC value statements that we want to embrace in all that we do.

OUR REVISED MISSION The Junior League of Cincinnati is an organization of women whose mission is to advance women’s leadership for meaningful community impact through volunteer action, collaboration, and training.

OUR VALUES Service: We are in service to our community and one another. Women’s Empowerment: We train and empower women to be leaders in our community and empower women through our community partner programs. Meaningful Connections: We build intentional connections and relationships across membership and make meaningful connections to and within our community.

We also had a meaningful October. At our GMM, advocacy experts shared information on how individual members can advocate for change at the local level. If you were not able to be at that meeting, hopefully you caught the eblast that captured all of this valuable training material, as well as some ways you can participate in the Children’s Law Center efforts. You may have had the opportunity to join Cherylanne Skolnicki during “member favorite” small group in-home sessions in November. Cherylanne is a career coach and podcaster, and is known for “helping women live their happiest, most fulfilling lives.” We appreciate her donation of time to speak to us about how to be more balanced in our lives and as JLC and community leaders. Behind the scenes, there has been a lot of activity. The JLC leaders spent the summer putting together a comprehensive Annual Plan. This plan is a roadmap for all of our committees that include specific actions and goals that we want to accomplish for the year. If you have not seen this plan, you can find it on our Members Only website. With our Annual Plans in place, it is exciting to see it come to life with a calendar of meaningful training, volunteer opportunities and engagement events. There is a lot of activity happening here and now. Though we are also looking to our future. We have several ad hoc committees hard at work thinking about what needs to happen to allow us to continue to live our mission in year 104 and beyond. There is a Community Ad Hoc seeking to answer the question on “how the JLC should be making an impact in the community 10 years from now?” There is a Training Ad Hoc, which you will read more about in this issue, that is seeking to understand what training we need to bring to our members - and they are looking at it from an important angle: what does our Cincinnati community need when it comes to trained volunteers? There is a Financial Ad Hoc that is working to refresh our financial policies and the structure of our financial reserves. We have a new Pipeline role that is thinking about the future of our leadership and how we might improve the leader experience. All of these ad hoc committees will culminate with important actions and goals, which will be written into our next Strategic Plan for 2023 - 2026. I hope to see you at some of our big upcoming events, including the annual Tour of Kitchens fundraiser on Friday, December 2 Toast to the Tour and the official event on Saturday, December 3, or at our holiday party on Thursday, December 15. We also have a fully virtual GMM on Tuesday, December 6 to hear from Sam Horn, an author, public speaker, and executive coach who says she is best at helping “people create respectful, collaborative, one-of-a-kind communications.” Let’s make this a meaningful year. Thank you again for your contribution to make this organization great.

The Association of Junior Leagues International is an organization of women whose mission is to advance women’s leadership for meaningful community impact through volunteer action, collaboration, and training. For more news and events, follow us on social media.