A Message from Our President
President Joel S. Smith, CMA, CPA
2008-2009 Season
Our Mission:
"To provide our membership with the education, network and tools to help them achieve their career goals and aspirations."
The Changing Of The Guard
They say all things must come to an end. Like everything else, my time as President of the
San Francisco Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants must come to an end.
I cannot begin to express to you the degree of gratitude I have for having the chance to
serve as your president. This truly has been the most rewarding experience of my life up to
this point.
I am thrilled to announce that for the third year in a row we have been an award winning chapter, having won
the third place banner, and consequently the Macleod Award for being third place in the Stevenson Division.
This is not only the first time the chapter has had three straight years of placements in the banner competition,
but this is also the highest ranking our chapter has ever achieved in its 88 year history.
In addition we have also won the Silver Medal for 2nd place in the Newsletter competition. This is the second
straight year that we have won an award for our newsletter.
I want to take a moment to thank the many people that have served on the board or have served the chapter
over the last three years. Their efforts were very instrumental in the level of success that this Chapter has
experienced.
To start, I would like to thank Milo Fleck, our Treasurer for the past three years. Milo has diligently kept our books, dealt with the many banking hassles that have come about as a result of the Patriot Act, and has
diligently kept us up date with our annual filings and reports to National Headquarters.
I also wish to thank Terra Casey Seeley for providing us with the board room in which we conduct chapter
business on a monthly basis. In addition, Terra has come through for us on numerous occasions when we
found ourselves in a last minute dash for room space when lines of communication somehow got short
circuited.
Barbara Wong has been wonderfully diligent in making sure the reports for all of the various activities got
properly reported to National Headquarters, and Tashia Flucas has helped us conduct surveys in our efforts to
help re-institute a technical meeting. There will be more on that to follow.
Arzu Smith is owed a considerable debt of gratitude for her efforts with the newsletter. Her efforts have led to
first and second place awards for two straight years.
Thank you Colette Duncan for your efforts with the website for the chapter as well as for the
ExcelInAccounting program.
Harry Massouda has not only kept the minutes for the board meeting as Secretary for the last three years, but
he has also been running the CMA Study group for the last two years, two nights a week. These sessions have
been running from two to three hours each night. His service to the chapter has been invaluable and is a major
reason for our success in the chapter competition.
Finally, there is the crew that has put together our Excel Programs over the last three years, and particularly
over the last year. I will try to give credit to all, but if I miss a few, please forgive me. I know that several
people have selflessly given their time and effort to these programs. Among these are Heather Roche-Waldo,
Stephen Tin, Shoru Hatamov, and of course John Hallett.
What can I say guys, your efforts have saved the chapter, have created an invaluable resource to our members,
and have been an example for other chapters to follow in their efforts to re-invigorate membership
participation. There was even an Excel Program offered at the National Conference this past year.
We once again are planning a year-end celebration as well as the first technical meeting in over three years.
The meeting will be held at the Protiviti office, located at 50 California Street, in San Francisco on July 21st, at
6:00 p.m. There will be a panel discussion of recruiters to discuss the state of Accounting Job Market. We
will also take some time to discuss with members ideas on what direction the chapter should head in. Food and Drinks will be covered by the chapter. See inside the June newsletter for further details. This is bound to be
very informative and be a great chance to mingle with your fellow IMA members and give your input on what
you would like to get out of your chapter.
I am very pleased to be handing off the reigns to our new President, John Hallett. John not only came up with
the original idea of the Excel Users Group, which saved our chapter from folding, but he has given so much of
himself to make sure these programs have been successful.
I am also very pleased to see some of the members that have been participants in these programs stepping up to take a role on the board. Without these kinds of efforts, our chapter simply could not function.
On that note, I want to take one last opportunity to encourage all of you out there to consider serving the
chapter either as a board member or as a volunteer to help our programs function. There are so many
programs we would like to operate, but are limited only by the amount of effort we can get from our members
in putting together these programs and executing them.
These programs of course include our Excel Users Group, our desire to reinstitute a technical meeting for
education and networking, and hopefully we can expand on the Controllership Course that was started on
down in the South Bay. This is a truly novel idea that we are very excited about, but need people to help bring it to fruition. Please come by our year-end celebration to discuss these ideas more.
I wish to end by telling you all about what serving the chapter has meant for me. I started out slowly, by showing up to the board meetings and helping where I could. I eventually took on the role as secretary, taking
the board minutes. I took this on because it seemed like something I could do with minimal effort. I then stepped in to re-start the newsletter partly as a chance to get my name out there in my business development
efforts, and also for the satisfaction of taking this role on and improving upon it and placing my mark upon the
chapter. I eventually stepped up to the role of president at a time when the chapter had lost direction and was on the verge of collapsing.
This experience has been invaluable as I have had the wonderful opportunity of working with my colleagues
in putting the chapter back on track, developed my leadership skills, experienced the joy of succeeding in
turning the chapter into an award winning operation, and have made invaluable friendships. Oh yeah, I also
found my wife who is on the verge of giving birth to our first child. This IMA stuff is cool man!!!
I want to thank you all once again for your participation in the chapter and for the opportunity to serve as your
president. Good luck in all of your future endeavors.
I wish you all a very fond farewell!!!
This is your organization. You pay money to be a part of it.
This is your chapter. Make it work for you.
Joel S. Smith
President
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