Now that I’m in front of you, albeit virtually, I’m reminded of last year’s Dinner Dance when I was sitting in the audience, just like you, listening to our 2009 President, Chuck Fogle, tell us about what the month of January meant to him. He said it represented change and new beginnings for many of us.

Well, Chuck was right then and is still right today. I would like to take it one step further though because I believe it is also a time for new opportunities. This year we are blessed with another great team of officers on our Board coupled with over 700 active members. That represents a tremendous opportunity to increase productivity in what we do best with regard to sponsoring events that support leadership development, participation in meaningful community service, interactive family & REALM events, jointly sponsored events with some of our Affinity Groups & last but not least, have some great networking get-together socials.

But before I go too much further on my vision for this year, I would like to sincerely thank two individuals, in particular, that I’ve gained a lot of guidance, wisdom & support from this past year, Chuck Fogle & Steve Mortensen. They have been very patient in the mentoring process leading up to this Presidents position for which I’m truly grateful & I’m also pleased to be able to call them great friends of mine. They both have consistently donated, year-after-year, their value-added contributions to this club in a most professional manner without expecting anything in return. They have been great Management Club leaders &
should be recognized as such.

I would like to now recognize our LMMC leadership team for 2010…

Please stand when I call your name and remain standing.

Chairman of the Board, Chuck Fogle.

We have a new Vice President this year, Christina Santiago.

A new Secretary, Miriam Fabregas.

And returning for a third term our Treasurer Debbie Curnes.

Your 2010 Board of Directors are…

Publicity – Irene Pabon

Membership – Veanie Anderson

Education – William Booker

Recreation – Annabell Baue

Special Projects and Awards – Buddy Grier

Community Service – William (Bill) Boyd

Our REALM representative – Dolores Indek

Let’s all give these 2010 Board Members a round of applause.

To those of you who served on the Board last year I, like Chuck, sincerely thank you for your hard work & outstanding contributions.

And for those of you serving this year, I thank you in advance for your commitment, your new ideas, your future contributions & the wonderful job that I know you will do!

With that said, I will answer the question I know is on your minds. What is Blake’s
vision going forward & how does he plan to lead this Management Club throughout the coming year. My vision can be summarized quite simply by stating that we as a Management Club need to step-up our focus & aggressive efforts toward embracing diversity inclusion within our Club. I know we will excel in our productivity beyond typical yearly expectations as a result. We can & will achieve this goal by creatively working harder at acknowledging our changing demographics within our membership base.

Furthermore, by tapping into that wealth of knowledge & talent that I know exist
within our diverse 700+ members we will ultimately be able to improve the foundation of our charter, become a more vibrant, effective and active club & thus be better able to serve the interests of our members & continue to serve the interests of our community. Basically when you get right down to it, our combined similarities will no doubt increase our common bond & our unique differences most certainly will provide new ideas & approaches to becoming a more productive Management Club in 2010 & beyond.

We have already begun a more effective communication & awareness process for our members that will include a formal schedule of projected events that are being planned and scheduled throughout the year. This formal schedule will be published & distributed in February with the intent for our members to see what’s coming-up well in advance.

We want to encourage all of our members to become more active & involved in these events that are being planned on your behalf. This approach will give our members a better understanding of the multitude of opportunities they can participate in & enjoy throughout the year most of which will be funded by yearly dues.

Now, I would like to say a few specific words about education, social activities and community service.

Education

Since our club is based upon “management” and we have many managers, directors and even vice presidents on our roster, I would like to start up something new, quarterly lunch & learn sessions whereby we have senior management panels, two different functional departments per session, to discuss their career progression inclusive of lessons learned. In this day & age where we have to streamline the development of our future leaders faster it only makes sense to prevent some of the counter-productive scar-tissue experiences from occurring during the progression of our future leaders.

Therefore, our intent is to eliminate or at least minimize the impact of such experiences on their development. This will be an excellent opportunity to make new contacts that will most certainly be beneficial for all who attend. These lunch and learn events will be jointly coordinated and sponsored by the Management Club and the MFC Connects Affinity Group.

Social Activities

It’s been said before & I’ll say it again, we work hard so we should also give ourselves an opportunity play hard. I would like to present more opportunities for our members to get together and have fun. Some of the events that we are working on are:

• Continuing our mixer events at unique locations on a bi-monthly basis.
• Have family events
• Pursue joint events with REALM
• Have our annual art show
• Group together for a short cruise
• A bus trip to Tampa Bay for an NFL Football Game complete with tailgating party.
• And our Annual Golf Tournament just to mention a few, all of which will provide new opportunities for us to socialize, network & get to know each other better.

Community Service

As always, we will continue to work one of the most important aspects of our club, community service. In these tough economic times WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES. We work for an industry that can continue to sustain itself. You already serve your community by producing the best possible products that can be built for our War Fighters who in return protect our Country.

We must continue to show our support to our local community by maintaining some of the events we have taken on in the past and also look for new opportunities to help others who are not as fortunate as us such as some of our retired veterans. That’s where the support of the Veterans Affinity group comes in.

We will be conducting a joint event with this Affinity group this year. All proceeds from such an event will go to support the needs of our Central Florida Veterans through our LM Veterans Affinity group. We have an opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of our past WarFighters some of which are seriously struggling & need our help. We will help our Veterans in need because quite simply it’s the right thing to do for all the right reasons.

In closing I would like to reiterate what Chuck said last year on the topic of Community Service / We must always remember who our community is… every day… and that we continue to help people less fortunate. Again, WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES… I know that with your support, commitment & participation we can make this another great year for serving our community!

Once again, I’m looking forward to being your President and Mary and I will be seeing you soon. Thank you!