Dear IAMC Members,
A month has already gone by since our previous Chair Charlie Waltz passed me the gavel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To share a little more about myself, I am the Director of Corporate Real Estate for Corning Incorporated. For the past 11 years, I have been overseeing the company’s global portfolio and other workplace service organizations. I’ve been an IAMC member since 2012, when I attended my first Fall Professional Forum in Omaha, Nebraska. I jumped into the organization and got involved with the International Committee, which allowed me to add value and bring learnings back to my company.
While IAMC is sound and has been around for 17 years, the organization is at a critical juncture. We need to grow IAMC and attract the future leaders of industrial real estate. Our organization needs to be global like the companies many of us represent. I have an aggressive agenda for the year; with the board’s support we will be tackling the sustainability of IAMC, diversity and inclusion of our membership, as well as updating our governance model to support us into the future. This will make IAMC organizationally stronger, financially more robust and globally more accessible.
I know leadership is a duty when one belongs to an organization like IAMC, but I want you to know I take on these responsibilities with enthusiasm and I appreciate your support along the way. I look forward to serving you this coming year.
Changing gears, if you were able to attend the Milwaukee Professional Forum, I hope it met your expectations. I believe it did for many, if not most, of the attendees. Executive Director Tate Godfrey recently reported to the board the overall score from on-site evaluations for Milwaukee was at 9.04. It is officially the highest rated Professional Forum in IAMC history! This is excellent news for IAMC and demonstrates positive results of a lot of hard work by the board, committees and staff.
The Milwaukee host group was well organized and very involved in the Forum preparations. And IAMC has been focusing on significant improvement to Professional Forum CRE professional development value. Years ago, the workshop sessions were few and far between. But in Milwaukee, we offered 15, all well rated by the attendees.
The top-rated Milwaukee workshop was entitled “Lease Flexibility Options, Strategies, & Rights.” It was moderated by Pete Quinn of Colliers International, with a panel consisting of Karen Shchuka of Penske Truck Leasing Co., Bill Jenkins of Thermo Fisher Scientific and Lindsay Friedman of Continental Tire. This kind of member involvement not only makes for a great program, but it is fuel that can power IAMC to wherever it wants to go.
I expect this positive momentum to carry over to the upcoming Biloxi Professional Forum. In this regard, I’m pleased to announce commercial real estate icon Bill Concannon of CBRE will address us in Biloxi on how the industry has developed and his vision of its future. This exciting program is but one example of many you can expect in Biloxi.
So, for my first call to action; Please go ahead and register now! I urge Corporate members to bring a colleague from their organization. For our Economic Developers and Service Providers, enroll early and find an industrial end-user to bring with you. If you need help recruiting a new member, please reach out to IAMC staff.
See you in Biloxi!
Best regards,
Colleen Caravati
Chair, IAMC Board of Directors