President Elect | Steve Levine
As President-Elect, I have been focusing on a few items that I believe will continue to help shape our chapter for years to come. One specific goal of mine was to modify our current retreat and ensure that members and their families could interact and bond with each other in ways that have not existed within our chapter before. I believe any time a member can get forum quality value with other members and their families, it makes our chapter that much stronger. I am very excited for our chapter retreat taking place out of state, for the first time, in San Diego at the Hotel Del, June 1-3. This year I have also focused on coming up with ways to make our large chapter feel more intimate without losing our size, and have been working with other chapters to discuss best practices and ideas surrounding this topic. I am excited to launch a new program in our chapter that will create many more amazing and intimate relations between members and create forum-like experiences with other forums and individual members. Lastly, the 2018/19 board is set and our goal is 100% attendance at this year’s Global Leadership Conference (GLC). Over the next couple months, we will all be working together to finalize and announce EO Arizona’s 25th Anniversary calendar.
Chapter Manager | Melissa Groen
Managing and supporting a mega-Chapter is a very rewarding and busy job. We currently have 164 EO Members and 47 Accelerators, and we continue to grow. I work very closely with and sit on both Boards, which 26 of our Members currently serve on. Event planning and management is a big responsibility of mine. Between July 1 and February 28, EO and Accelerator held over 30 different Learning and Social Chapter Events. This number does not include smaller events such as Sponsor Happy Hours, Moderator Dinners, Board Meetings, etc. Regionally, I also worked with EO San Diego to assist them with Alchemy 2017. My wins are felt when the EO and Accelerator Board and Chapter Members feel that I am an effective resource to them, and that all things pertaining to their Membership are being handled well.
Results for me are seen in successful events, positive feedback from the Board and Membership, solid relationships with venues and outside vendors, and success in completing PEAK and Celebrity requirements. My hope is that my efforts translate into our Chapter running as smoothly as possible. Between March 1 and June 30, EO and ACC have another 20 Learning and Social Events scheduled, one of which includes our Chapter Retreat. I will also be working on Board transition, GLC, Strategy Summit and planning for the 2018/19 event and meeting calendars. We will have two more incoming EO and Accelerator classes of new members, and soon it will be renewal and requalification time. EO is the organization that never sleeps!
Learning | Jeremy Young
As the role of Learning Chair for EO Arizona, I’ve spent the past 18 months getting ready for this year’s Learning Schedule. Really by the time your year starts in this position, you should have 80-90% of your calendar planned out and speakers booked. I had a blast this year trying to mix things up and do things differently. I knew that it wouldn’t be for everyone, but I feel like I definitely met my goal of bringing in speakers and guests who could motivate, inspire and lead people to become better CEOs, parents and partners. Some of the wins I experienced in this role is to have an overall average of 9 rating or above in aggregate from all of our learning events. We also had the most total number of attendees with our opening WOW event with Jeff Hoffman. An event I’m really proud of was our Stories of EO where members spoke in a forum-confidential setting about some of the struggles and wins they experienced in their lives. This was something new that I decided to try in our Chapter that I believe everyone enjoyed. Another cool win will be our closing WOW event on May 30th where Marshall Goldsmith will be speaking to us about his new book Triggers. I have heard from numerous members that they feel that some of the best events in their entire tenure has been this year which makes me proud that I’ve been able to add value to their EO membership and experience.
Social | Mike Privert
The social committee has been hard at work, and play of course, over the past six months. We kicked off the year with a happy hour at The Living Room at Gainey Ranch. November was a busy month with our first lunch and learn event with member Bradley Zall at Accurate Companies and the UofA v. ASU Sol Devils tailgate party. Who could forget the holiday party in December? The EO Lodge of Legends event at the Four Seasons was a night to remember. With over 170 members and guests, Santa even paid a visit to see what all the commotion was about. In February, we had three members open their homes for the annual Dine Around event . Thank you Stacy Fornara, Paul Debow, and Justin Grossman for hosting our members and their guests. There are a lot of exciting events coming up for the balance of the year. In March, we have our sold out OIL (Once-In-A-Lifetime) event with over 100+ members and guests attending. This event is truly going to be an OIL experience for your taste buds as well as member togetherness. Our annual Family Event on April 14 will include lots of fun activities and food for the entire family and be a great opportunity to meet new members and their family’s. We close out the year with a final Lunch & Learn event on May 8 at Kyle Bell’s office at Bell Sports Marketing/Charity Benefits Unlimited.
Membership | Michael Cocanower
The first half of the year was an active one for the membership role. Aside from keeping up with ‘standard’ duties such as successfully adding 13 new members, there was lots of activity in other areas as well. As part of their 30th anniversary, EO Global created the Patron program and encouraged chapters to recruit a local business leader. Not to be outdone by other chapters in the region, Governor Doug Ducey was named the Patron for EO Arizona. There was also a lot of work under the ‘rules and regulations’ headlines with significant changes to the chapter’s bylaws, as well as a new membership qualification category allowing Accelerator members to qualify for EO with $1M in trailing twelve months of revenue. Finally, in order to improve the quality of new members coming in, we also rearchitected the membership vetting process to include an onsite interview for every candidate by a member of the membership committee.
Forum | Scot Wilcox
For the last 6 months I have been working on getting new members placed and learning more about each forum so that the placement process goes smoother. We have a super strong group of Moderators this year so that is a big win but I can’t take credit for that. Forum satisfaction is high and that brings value to the chapter because healthy forums mean a healthy chapter. For the next 5 months I am going to automate this role as much as possible to help future Forum Chairs focus on improving the Forum experience for members instead of spending valuable time doing administrative work. I am also focused on a smooth transition to the next group of Moderators as well as a smooth transition to the next Forum Chair.
Integration Chair | Matt Blanton
For the last 6 months, we’ve successfully put through 2 classes of EOAZ graduates and have successfully integrated class 1 and currently working on class 2. There is a new KPI dashboard created as well as a revamped process for the Integration Role. The trifecta team (Membership / Forum / Integration) is communicating better and ensuring the new members are receiving the support needed. Over the next 5 months I will be closing out the work for class 2 and prepping for class 3, all while going back and tracking classes one and two.
Tenured Member Integration | Jon Rosenberg
After several years on the Board, I agreed to take on the new position of Tenured Member Integration this year. The challenge with this position is that it is very new, not only to EO Arizona, but to EO Global. Thus, there was truly no road map to follow. As a result, we decided to create our own way, while using several ideas with help from many current and former board members as well as many tenured members. The overall goal is to keep tenured members (those who have been in EO for at least 10 years) engaged in the chapter. These are some of our most valuable and experienced members…so we are very lucky to have an opportunity to learn from them. This year, our tenured members have been extremely open to helping out. Some examples of successes thus far, include:
1. Increased attendance by Tenured members at EO events.
2. Many Tenured members offering to help seed new forums, as needed.
3. Tenured Members acting as moderators at the Forum Mashup (and hopefully some will agree to next mashup!)
4. Willingness to share their stories in our Monday Spotlights.
5. Great Meetings with several tenured members in an effort to gain more knowledge on EO’s history
We are excited to continue to expand upon this with further engagement and I look forward to any input that other members would like to share.
Finance Chair | Elizabeth Hale
Thank you for this opportunity to serve on the EO Board! I love EO! In my role as finance chair so far this year, I have met my top 3 goals: 1) Transparency for the Membership – All financials have been delivered, complete with visual graphs each month! 2) Clarity for the Board – Easy to track expenditures – we have streamlined the process, eliminating the requirement for Board Chairs to complete forms and follow coding sheets! 3) Spend the budget in a way that drives impact! – We are on track to spend more than 100% of the current year’s dues on amazing learning & social events, even utilizing some of the excess reserves from prior years to fund blockbuster events like the WM Open! Finally, working together with the President, we have successfully re-allocated the budget mid-year to be able to fund the amazing Once-In-A-Lifetime event coming up on March 10th for our chapter members! For the remainder of this fiscal year, I am planning to focus on how to save fees and improve the speed of collections on membership renewals, as well as to track any new incentives and rebates related to Strategic Alliances/Accelerator/Virtual Learning and Membership from EO Global.
Strategic Alliance Partners | Jerry Foster
In my role as SAP Chair, I have set out to replace, identify and solidify relationships in cornerstone industry segments that benefit membership. Those include banking, legal, payroll, accounting, insurance, financial advisory, and real estate. I have achieved success in some (banking – Wells Fargo, legal – Quarles & Brady, real estate – LevRose and payroll- Payroll Experts) and have many irons in the fire for others. I am expecting to bring on two other key SAPs by the end of our learning calendar year. Fundamentally, we have changed the paradigms associated with sponsorship by introducing two differentiated sponsorship levels, Platinum and Gold, as well requiring multi year commitments. In looking deeper into our relationships and trying to understand how to create mutually beneficial relationships, we have increased communication with our partners and found creative ways to drive ROI for them. This strategic plan of adding both value and continuity are vital to supporting a robust budget year after year. Why is this important to you the member – success at the SAP level directly impacts the ability to hold the line with membership dues while delivering outstanding programming for the Chapter as a whole.
Communications | Brian Colling
Being the marketing and communications chair this year has been very fun and exciting. Our key objective at the beginning of the year was to grow EO’s awareness both internally and externally in the community. With over 160 amazing EO members the growth has been magnetic. Internally we have seen the EO private Facebook page grow leaps and bounds as it has become the go to place for many EO members to connect and help one another while also serving as a great reminder of the amazing upcoming EO events and a way to recap and share experiences together. Externally the growth has been just as exciting. We have seen over a 500% growth in external awareness with our social media channels gaining traction every month and having many aspects of our #BecauseofEO campaign adopted by Global. We have also been tracking and sharing EO members in the news and are using our social media channels to reach new members and finding new ways to bring our sponsors value. I look forward to continuing to highlight the many amazing things our EO members and organization do in the community!
Mentorship | Dawn Cartier
This year’s mentorship program kicked off with its own specialized AFS training putting everything in high gear. EO has inked an official relationship with Mentorcloud, an online mentor/mentee resource and EO Arizona was selected as one of the US locations for the pilot program. Invites have just gone out to those currently in the program and expectations are high for the new connectivity this should bring for our local program and the ability to reach out to others across the globe. Please save the date on your calendar (April 26th) for the Ben Brooks Mentorship award. This is open to everyone from EO and celebrates our founding member, Ben Brooks, with dinner and awards for those in the mentorship program. The mentorship committee is busy with a few things to enhance the program for next year. First, we are working on rewriting the mentorship application. It will focus less on what you do and more on the issues requiring assistance. Second, we are working on the rollout for next years program. I know it seems early, but the applications will open up for next years program in June, right as our local chapter goes dark. If you are interested in the program for next year, please be on the lookout in the Monday announcements and EO Facebook page beginning in early June. The kickoff training for the 2018-2019 program will be held in September 2018 (official date to be announced soon).
Accelerator | Adam Arkfeld
Arizona’s Accelerator Program has been forging ahead as the largest and one of the most mature chapters in the United States. As of the first half of the year, we’ve approved 8 new members and transitioned 4 to EO with another group in the application process for the spring class. At last count, 82% of participants have a mentor from EO and another 8 EO members are generously donating their time as Accountability Group coaches. We’ve also started to see EO members at our quarterly learning days to freshen-up their business skills. One goal for the year was to increase member value which we’re doing by jointly hosting an event with EO in May with a well-known EO speaker Alan Miltz. Events like this one couldn’t be done without our growing sponsor support who are more aligned with the needs of our members than ever. If you’re not involved with the Accelerator chapter at some level and are interested in learning more, send me an email.
Brand Ambassador | Sheri Sender
As Brand Ambassador, the most exciting win that I continually work on is our partnership with The Phoenix Business Journal. Having our members share their “Because of EO…” story four times a year in print is truly a testament of the amazing organization we are a part of. We have sponsored two of PBJ’s events this year with logo’d name tags, logo’d lanyards and a video played during the lunch which has actually garnered some awesome awareness. I have also worked with Deron Webb who has been instrumental in solidifying a partnership with UofA where our members can speak to their students and share their entrepreneurial journey. We also have members speaking to the Brophy Entrepreneur Club at the beginning of May. My main goal as Brand Ambassador has been and will continue to be to provide member value by allowing the people we do business with and the Phoenix community as a whole know who we are. With our members being highlighted in the PBJ, our EO email signatures and walking around with our Ignite your EO Spark Yeti cups, I believe we are doing just that!
MyEO | Melissa DiGianfilippo
I have been working to increase visibility for MyEO in our chapter, by working with individual members to share their personal passions through the creation of and involvement in events, groups and forums. We’ve had some excellent EOAZ championed events, groups and forums born in the past 6 months. From a Guatemala trip to a three-day mountain biking trip to a Women of EOAZ breakfast club. I’ve also personally gotten to know many members on a new level as they have shared ideas for trips or experiences they want to create through MyEO. In 6 months, we’ve created 3 events, 2 groups, and 1 forum! I’m working on stats to show the number of members who have gotten involved in a MyEO event, group or forum as well. MyEO event gives you the chance to connect with other members (locally, regionally or globally) who share the same passions or interests as you. I’m reaching out to members individually who have expressed interest in MyEO, and members I do not know all that well to help them find a way to customize their EO experience through MyEO. I’m also working to share more global MyEO content in our private Facebook group.
