First, let me say that is a privilege and an honor to be serving as President of the greatest MRA Chapter in the country – the Greater NY MRA!  And make no mistake – I couldn’t be more sincere or ACCURATE in those words – the GREATEST MRA CHAPTER!  We have the largest membership in the entire country, as well as one of the most diverse memberships, ranging from Political, CPG, Government, Advertising, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Entertainment, and more.  We are certainly a melting pot of specialties, personalities, and skill-sets – and it’s great to see them all come together at our various events and networking opportunities throughout the year.  But of course, being in such an industrial area of the country can come at a price when hard times befall us – such as we have all seen in the past six-nine months.

This is certainly the most difficult and uncertain economy I have faced in my working career, and in thinking about the Chapter as well as the industry as a whole, I think it’s important to remind ourselves to look to the future and what we want those future achievements to be.  I have found that doing this helps to reinforce the little steps we must all take, even during the toughest of times, in order to achieve those future goals.

To that end, you will see many changes in the Chapter over the next few months, which we as your board believe are both the natural progression of the chapter, as well as the immediate response to the current market climate.  This newsletter is the first of many steps, being our first GREEN newsletter.  That’s right – we’re going PAPERLESS.  We think it’s a great step towards lowering costs for the Chapter as well as being environmentally conscious as a group.  More steps along these lines will be the archiving of newsletters so you can always have them at your fingertips, and the potential online hosting of a searchable Roster.
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