President's Message

Daphne Richards, National ESP President

Well, my ESP friends, just like the start of my time as President did a year ago, the ending has now snuck up on me. In just a few short days, I’ll pass the gavel to my esteemed colleague, Travis West, from the Ohio Alpha Eta Chapter, who’ll take over as president at the end of our national conference in Billings. While I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as leader of the amazing team that is your national board, I know that I am passing things over to the most capable of hands.

Although I’ll be remaining on the board for one more year, as past president (and continuing on even past that with my duties on the JCEP Board), before I leave Billings I’ll say goodbye to three national board members that I’ve served with for the past five years. When I started my stint as Southern Region VP back in 2018, our current Past President, Karen Reddersen, was serving as the Northeast Regional VP. And Mollie Toppe, outgoing Northeast Region VP, and Katie Ahern, outgoing Western Region VP, were members of our national Marketing Committee, which I served as Chair. As I’m sure other former board members will attest, those that we serve with on the ESP national board often become some of our closest friends, and that is most definitely true for me. I will cherish my fellow board members, and the time we spent together, always. I hope that I don’t cry ugly tears while on the podium in Billings, but I’ll be packing the water-proof mascara, just in case.

When I began this year as your president, I set an intention to “make it easy,” by which I meant that I would do my best to improve ease of collaboration and teamwork across the organization, and to improve what processes and procedures that I could, even if only incrementally so.

A few places where I’ve focused my attention include:

Revamping the templates for the board member reports that feed into our monthly meeting agenda, to streamline discussion during our monthly board meetings.

Meeting weekly with our national office team, to provide them greater insight into our organization and ways of working, as they continue to improve the services that they offer to our national board and membership.

Continuing to offer an annual onboarding training, involving the entire national team, for newly elected board members.

Fostering enhanced board communication, collaboration, and camaraderie, via WhatsApp group texts.

Creating a “national conference playbook” for members of the national board, to enhance awareness of their roles and responsibilities during the national conference.

I’m certainly proud of these “process” achievements, but I am even more proud of the teamwork that has been exhibited by my fellow board members, and of the level of comfort that they have exhibited when expressing their unique thoughts and opinions during board meetings, especially on the many sensitive issues we’ve had to navigate this year. I’m not sure that the team loved all my ideas, but even when they didn’t, they were gracious, and always willing to give it a try (with only an occasional eye roll here and there), no matter how hare-brained my schemes were.

Our team has truly accomplished a lot this year, and each national board member has shown immense dedication to this organization, devoting countless hours to their assigned duties as leaders in their various roles. Our national office also continues to grow and improve in their service to our beloved institution. Nicole Jacobs, Colleen Boeder, and Ryan Underwood, among others in our national office, have done an amazing job in their transition over the last two years, and have truly elevated our organization to new heights, including a modernized landing page for our national website, facilitation of professional development for the national board, enhanced management and production services for our national conference, and assistance implementing processes and procedures to foster greater collaboration among the members of the national board (aka, helping me to implement my hare-brained schemes!).

I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve accomplished this year for you, our members. And I’m proud of the momentum that we are moving with into the future. As they say, “teamwork makes the dream work,” and that is so very, very true this year, of this team. Please join me in thanking each of the national board members that were elected to serve as your representatives, and in expressing gratitude to the members of our national office team. It has been my honor to serve them, and you, this year, and I look forward to continuing to serve, albeit in a different way, for many years into the future.

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