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Chair's Column

Gayle J. Gibson's Column

November 2022

Greetings and well wishes to all my fellow members of AIChE’s Management Division. I am honored to serve you as Chair of the Division for 2022.

We are a group of members from many professions, backgrounds and experiences. We each come to the Division with different talent, experiences and needs. We have members that have been in industry leadership roles for many years, engineers looking to take on their first managerial assignment, people leading project teams and some leading companies. Overall, we have a tremendous opportunity to share and learn from each other and this deep wealth of expertise and experience.

Please do find our Group on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12101021/), check our website for updates (www.aichemgmt.org), join our various events (webinars and sessions at Spring & Annual Meeting) and engage with the Division Leadership in our monthly meetings. These are all opportunities for you to learn, to share and find a community of diverse, insightful and fascinating colleagues!

As managers and leaders in chemical engineering, you all know the importance of safety, which is  reinforced by operational procedures, cultural values, and constant learning to continually improve so that people and the environment are not harmed. We have a similar challenge in our profession to apply focus, learning, and rigor in a data-driven way to truly have our chemical engineering profession welcoming and inclusive for all. We know that diverse teams are better at innovation and to really achieve that, our workplaces, teams, conferences and activities need to be inclusive. The broad experience of the Management Division can continue to aid AIChE in truly implementing IDEAL (https://www.aiche.org/Equity-Diversity-Inclusion) so that each and every current and prospective chemical engineer feels welcome and included.

In the coming year, the Division Leadership will be working on refreshing our Bylaws, our operating practices and award procedures so that we hold ourselves to a high standard to live IDEAL in what we do. We thank CTOC for the opportunity to lead the way using some of their tools.

As I look back at 2022, some highlights:

  • Membership – we have been steady the past few years with ~300 members and continue to attract handfuls of new members.
  • Awards – we gave 3 awards: the Management Award to Dr Harold T. Conner, the Young Leader Award to Dr Rashi Tiwari and the Management Division Service Award to Dr Fernando J. Aguirre. We continue to have high quality set of nominees and a strong Awards Committee that is doing an excellent job. The sessions where awardees share their experiences are memorable and inspirational!
  • Themes – our 2 themes of Career Development and Modern Management Practices, both with IDEAL woven throughout, has resonated well with our members. It has been a helpful guide for our programming focus.
  • Programming – we put on a total of 9 sessions across the Spring & Annual meetings and Annual Student Conference and held 2 well attended webinars.
  • Volunteers – we have some very dedicated volunteers & support staff from the Institute that help the Division function, including a strong slate of officer nominees for 2023. We continue to look for more opportunities for more people to engage.
  • Finances – we have a strong balance sheet that can support creative approaches for  programming and reaching our members.

And recently, our Division leadership discussed some opportunities for the future:

  • Engagement – our Division is here for our members and in order to best serve you, we need to hear from you on what you need and are looking for. Please feel free to connect with any of the Division leaders. (https://www.aiche.org/community/sites/divisions/management/leadership)
  • Collaboration – our expertise is valued by others, and we welcome more interaction with other Divisions & Forums within AIChE. We have committed to hosting a joint session with ChE & The Law at the Annual Meeting in 2023. We would like to re-invigorate our interactions with the Young Professionals. We would also like to explore other opportunities with the Environmental Division, the Process Development Division as well as the IDEAL Communities (MAC, DORIC, LGBTQ+ and WIC).
  • Programming – we understand that managers are involved in many things and have high demands on their time. We are learning, along with AIChE, that post-pandemic face to face meetings, while highly valuable for those that attend, may not be reaching the breadth of members we feel we could. We are pleased with attendance at our 2 webinars in 2022, and will look to increase emphasis on virtual sessions. However, in order to continue and evolve our programming, we need more volunteers willing to create and host quality sessions relevant to today’s members.

I have been energized to meet and engage with you at the Spring Meeting in San Antonio, the Annual Student Conference & Annual Meeting in Phoenix, in our 2 webinars and in the monthly leadership meetings. I am amazed by our collective experience and expertise and see more possibilities of what we might do in the future. But alas, the year is going by so quickly!

As we head toward the holiday season in the U.S., and the end of the calendar year, it is a great time to reflect and recharge. I have been honored to serve you as Chair of the Division for 2022 and look forward to even more great things we can do together in the coming years.

Sincerely,

Gayle J. Gibson

2022 AIChE MGMT Chair