Happy 2012 to all our Long Island members and friends. I am so happy to be chosen as your new co-president with Angela Zelaya. Angela and I feel that we each bring something different and special to the organization. Many of you know me and have known that I have been very involved with women's groups on Long Island for many years, including as a past chair of SCWBEC and the current Director of Member Services for BPW International. I have had the privilege of working in the President's Office in Oak Beach with our now Immediate Past President, Liz Benham, and I provide virtual communication support to our new Australian President, Freda Miriklis.
As we revitalize our organization, I hope to encourage our members to embrace the new triennium theme: "Empowered Women Leading Business," and to get involved with the BPW initiatives; The Equal Pay Day Campaign, The Women Empowerment Principles and the International Trade Centre (increasing women in the global supply chain).
February and March bring the President's Leaders Summit at the Princeton Club and CSW56 (Commission on the Status of Women) at the United Nations. Please try to attend these events as they are educational and exciting and provide an opportunity to meet many international sisters and make new friends.
As we plan our future, both with local projects and with global friendships, I look forward to getting to know our current members better and introduce many new ones to our wonderful organization.
Michelle Miller
Co-President EPW Long Island
There’s no better time in history to be a woman! Our freedoms are not only at their highest right now but there is so much potential yet to be realized. In these “best of times and worst of times”, as Charles Dickens once penned, it may appear as the worst of times to most of the world but are the best of times for EPW/BPW as we rise to the occasion, as us women know how to do best, and take our local, national and international worlds to places we have not yet seen. With the Arab Spring, the tumultuous economy, and a rift of political ideologies brimming in our mind’s eye, we as women have the opportunity to, much as many of us have done with screaming children and hostile teenagers, use our ingenuity and innate instinct to create something beautiful out of chaos. It was in times like these that a woman created chocolate chip cookies during the Great Depression to stretch the monies available while still indulging in chocolate or Clara Barton seized the opportunity to fulfill the needs of the wounded in a way that only a woman could and so it will be for us as we look forward to 2012 with great expectation!With the structure of BPW International paving the way for deliberate success and the collaborative team of co-Presidents , myself and Michelle Miller, we are confident that this will be our best year yet. As “Empowered Women Leading Business”, our mission is to gather a fierce group of women who will hone each others’ skills, build each others’ businesses, and provide precedence for the generation to follow of what it is to truly be an enterprising and professional woman. My professional background consists of being a Development Director for a local Non-Profit and now in corporate America providing a unique flavor to the chapter which will streamline the Non-Profit an corporate perspectives as we move to new endeavors. Also, as a Young BPW, I will be amongst the bridge generation to entrust the integrity of the BPW vision and history to a new day and age.
I’m so delighted to be able to serve the women in Suffolk County in this capacity and look forward to meeting more of you women who will join us in the future!
With much enthusiasm,
Angela Zelaya
Co-President
