President's Message | October 2021

Many thanks to all of the speakers, sponsors, staff and attendees that made SUMMIT 2021 a success! What an amazing time celebrating our 11th annual conference and how exciting to surpass 800 attendees at this year’s program.

We are thrilled that our member and conference community has continued to grow and that our reach has expanded to even more women and companies in need of our resources and services. I greatly enjoyed getting to see so many of you in person and to experience live powerful presentations. This year’s SUMMIT moved me to think about the superheroes I encounter each day personally and professionally and reminded me of the power of appreciation.

In this spirit of appreciation, this year’s conference would not have been possible without the ingenuity and resilience of our WiM staff. Our team has overcome a lot of personal and professional challenges the past 20 months. Like many of your teams, we have adapted to working remotely, pausing live programs and finding ways to deliver learning and training differently, but with the same potency. The WiM staff has continued to offer services and programs despite the pandemic and has done such an amazing job of creatively finding ways to adapt and thrive. People are our most valuable resource and our small, but mighty, WiM team has done such a great job this year to serve our members and industry. Special shout-out to our meetings team, Jackie, Lisa and Jen, who had to reimagine what meetings are and become experts overnight on new platforms to facilitate virtual participation in our programs.

As we close our biggest program of the year, we don’t have time to rest on our laurels. We have two large regional conferences in November and March, our first-ever corporate member-exclusive Winter Leadership Conference in St. Pete Beach (January 31-February 1), and we are already making plans for SUMMIT 2022 in Atlanta, GA.

Thank you for being a part of our organization and member community. We look forward to your continued participation in the future!

Best,

Allison Grealis
Founder and President  
Women in Manufacturing (WiM)

Follow me @allisongrealis

Email: agrealis@womeninmfg.org