August 20, 2014
In the short time since I was sworn in as President, it’s become overwhelmingly clear to me that we’re now past the brink of becoming a whole new organization. Big changes are already under way both within the AIAS and in allied organizations like the AIA and NCARB. You may already have hear about many of these changes, but I assure you there are many that you haven’t learned about yet, and more developments are coming every day. For instance, if you follow the collaterals, you know that some pretty revolutionary changes are underway over at NCARB, all of them geared toward making the path to licensure more closely aligned to the way practice actually works. However, you may not have heard that Westin and I recently represented the AIAS at the triennial World Congress of Architecture in Durban, South Africa. While there, we talked with student leaders from around the world about establishing a global dialogue among our organizations, more reflective of the global nature of the profession we’re about to inherit.
With the hire of our new Executive Director, Nick Serfass, we’re seizing the opportunity to take a fresh look at everything. And I do mean everything. We’re cleaning out the office, reexamining our communications outlets, rebuilding our approach to strategic partnerships, finding new avenues for non-dues income, and more than anything else, listening to you. Nick mentioned this last week in his Notes from National (another new idea!), and I want to reaffirm how serious we are. We’re not just listening, we’re acting. We’re ramping up chapter visits and engagement with the collaterals, we’re rebuilding the website from the ground up, we’re finding ways to make conferences and content more affordable and accessible. And that’s just in the last week and a half.
From now on, when we see an opportunity — to improve the value of your membership, to provide you a new resource, to empower you to advance your career — we’re going to move on it. The AIAS represents a passionate, innovative, and driven group, and the organization as a whole should reflect the individuals that comprise it. We don’t stand still, because neither do you.
– Charlie Klecha
