Organization Update 9/14/18

Hello Competent Women!

As many of you know, I have recently been appointed to the position of President/CEO here at Women for Sobriety. What an honor to serve the women (and future women) of the New Life Program in this way! Thank you for all the congratulations and well wishes that have been sent my way – I am privileged to know so many caring and compassionate women!

I have been involved with many of the changes to the organization in the last few years, first in my role as member of the Board of Directors, then in my role as Project Manager, and I am happy to say that we are just getting started! I’ve also heard that sometimes women feel a bit left out and confused by everything that’s happening, and would like a little more information about what’s changing, what’s being planned, and how they can be involved. I want you to know that I hear you, and this new blog series is my attempt to help everyone feel a part of this exciting change process.

My goal is to make a blog entry every Friday to summarize all the good work we have done together in the past week. Now this is my goal, mind you, and I will ask in advance for your future understanding if I miss a week, post late, or if my post is very brief periodically! I encourage you to share your questions or comments, and I will do my best to respond when my time and energy permit.

So what has the organization been up to this week? Many women have reached out to the office to process the news of our Tuesday announcement. What gratitude I have to be witness to women competently talking through their feelings around the recent changes, using this as an opportunity for reflection and growth. We’ve experienced even more change in the office as our temporary employee, Ann Marie, who many of you met at conference, transitioned out of her position here, and two new part-time employees have been hired. Mindi will be here 3 days a week helping ship off all your bookstore orders, and Carol will be here one day a week to keep the other type of books in tip-top shape. Please help me welcome them to the office team!

One of my highest priorities as President is increasing outreach activities and making sure that the New Life Program gets into the hands of the women who need it. I’ve been working with 2 volunteers on designing attractive new marketing items – I’ll post pics as they come in – and we just received some great new full-color flyers to hand out, which for the first time ever feature some real-life 4C women (I’ll let you guess which ones in the photos above). A big thank you to online member PerditaX for organizing the photo shoot at the 2018 Annual Weekend Conference! Much of this work is in preparation for a large event that WFS will be exhibiting at in early October, the NAADAC conference in Houston, TX. One of the local Certified Moderators and I will be manning an outreach booth, telling the over 1,000 expected addiction-focused professionals in attendance all about the WFS New Life Program!

I am also happy to announce the formation of a new volunteer team, the Conference Planning Workgroup, which has stepped up to help plan the 2019 Annual Weekend Conference! If you have great ideas about how to make our annual conference even better, or you’re just super organized and want to help with logistics, please consider emailing [email protected] for more information about how to become involved. I was hoping to attend the NIAAA Advisory Council meeting and meet some of our Maryland participants on Thursday, but the meeting was unfortunately cancelled due to inclement weather. Other than that, the week was full of the unappealing work of filling out legal compliance paperwork and negotiating with the landlords to get the heaters in the office fixed (it’s going to get cold soon!), but nobody wants to hear about that kind of boring stuff!

Thank you for taking the time to read about the exciting things happening in the New Life Program! I wish all of you a safe and sober weekend, especially our friends in the south affected by Hurricane Florence.

Enthusiastically Yours!
Adrienne Miller
President/CEO
Women for Sobriety, Inc.