President's Message

Members and Friends of IMA's Mt. Rainier Chapter:

January, 2020:

Happy New Decade to everybody!  Both our December and January joint IMA/AFWA meetings were quite successful, with good networking, conversations, and very engaging speakers. In December, Curt Rosengren gave us some hints on how to become less perfectionist, and Shawn Mattingly briefed us on what's new and different in tax during our January meeting. She compressed a four hour presentation into an hour and a half, so it was satisfyingly intense! 

There are three upcoming items to keep in mind:

February 13: We are volunteering at a food bank in Puyallup in the afternoon of Thursday the 13th. Please see the column on the right for more info and to register.

February 27-29: IMA's REST conference in Reno, which will provide you with 22 CPE hours. You may want to apply for a scholarship to cover the $500 registration fee. Information about the conference here: http://rest-ima.org/  If you are interested in applying for the scholarship (application deadline February 1), please use and submit this form: IMA_REST_Scholarship_2020.docx 

April 25: We are again working on the program for a four hour Saturday morning session at the University of Puget Sound. Two hours will cover the annual ethics requirement. Please reserve that morning (yes, it is a Saturday, but many people found that to be advantageous last April) and look for more information to be posted here or e-mailed to you. 

For those of you involved in tax preparation and end-of-year closures, stay strong!  Cheers from Andreas Udbye 

August, 2019:
Our events planning relationship with AFWA (Accounting & Financial Women's Alliance) is thriving and continuing, and most of the meetings this coming year will be joint events. The first one, on September 9, is organized by AFWA, while two events later this fall are mostly planned by the local IMA board members. Joint events help boost attendance and limit potential duplication and competition in what is admittedly a limited market. Even our joint events typically draw about twenty people, although we are working to boost attendance through better marketing efforts. We hope you can come to several events and also tell your colleagues and friends about them. 
As shown below, IMA will host two education related events in October and November. The dates are tentatively October 16 (a downtown Tacoma evening event) and November 23 (a Saturday morning event at PLU). We were encouraged by the popularity of the Saturday morning program at UPS this last April, and will try this format again this fall. The Saturday morning session will be reasonably priced, includes breakfast, and will qualify for up to four CPE hours. More will be posted about these two events over the next few weeks. 
Here is a summary of our planned events for the coming year:

The Mt. Rainier Chapter board currently consists of the four officers: Andreas Udbye (President), Kris Parsons (Vice President), Loran Payne (Treasurer), and Ruth Perdue (Secretary). We would be delighted if you would be interested in joining us as an at-large board member!  

May, 2019
On Saturday, April 27 we hosted a morning event with two presenters here where I teach at the University of Puget Sound. We were 23 people, and were treated to great and thought provoking subjects, where I don't think anybody was even close to bored!  Ryan Pferdehirt was an excellent speaker on bioethics, and Alan Van Boven equally so on logistics and transportation issues. Participants got four CPE hours if they needed them. A healthy breakfast was served, and the meeting room was just right for this type of event. We may try the Saturday morning format again in the fall, possibly at Pacific Lutheran University. There are pros and cons to Saturday meetings.
For evening events, we are still relying on AFWA's (Accounting and Financial Women's Alliance's) competent events organizing. The next joint meeting is on May 20th, where Erick Watson will be presenting on a hot topic, Big Data. See the events column to the right for more information.
We hope you will be able to attend future events, whether joint AFWA/IMA meetings, or the next IMA event in October.

March, 2019
We are excited about our April 27 event, where we will be hosting two local experts in bioethics and supply chain logistics. Two different topics, indeed, but both very timely and interesting for all of us.  Each session is two hours (or 1 hour and 40 minutes to be exact), and each carries two CPE hours if you need it, including the ethics requirement. Four CPE hours for 30 dollars for IMA or AFWA members is a great deal, especially when we throw in the morning coffee and pastries.
Yes, it is on a Saturday morning, but you will be back in plenty of time for gardening and family activities in the afternoon. 
The event is held on the beautiful campus of the University of Puget Sound. 
Come join us and spend an enriching morning with students and fellow practitioners!

January, 2019
Happy New Year to everybody!  
The joint AFWA/IMA tax update meeting on January 14 attracted almost 30 people and proves to be an informative event. The next joint meeting is scheduled for February 11, where Curt Rosengren will present on The Imperfectionist's Guide to Less Stress & More Success.  

There will be no joint AFWA/IMA meeting in March, but IMA has started the preparations for a Saturday morning meeting to be held on April 27. The plan is to offer a 2-hour ethics presentation, as well as a 2-hour session on business analytics at this meeting, for a total of four CPE hours for the ones who need those. The April 27 meeting will most likely be held at one of the local colleges to encourage student participation. 

Talking about students, look for information on this year's scholarship round. The application requirements and deadlines will be posted soon. As in 2018, the scholarships may be in the form of a free trip to IMA's annual student leadership conference, this year to be held Nov. 14-16 in Charlotte, NC. 

November, 2018:
Our chapter has successfully participated in several dinner meetings arranged by AFWA. We also sent six students to IMA's annual Student Leadership Conference in St. Louis earlier this month. We are currently planning a two-hour ethics session to be held in January or February. It is inspiring to read the recent note by Dee Freeland, the energetic leader of AFWA Tacoma. What she is writing is so true:

Thank you for attending the Mt. Rainier IMA and Tacoma AFWA Young Professionals & Students event on Thursday night.  I hope you enjoyed our speaker.  Stephen had lots of valuable tips packed in his fun, entertaining Power Point presentation.  I am looking forward to reviewing the presentation.  Others may wish to do that as well, so Stephen has sent it to me to share with our attendees [please let us know if you would like a copy]

So, what was my big take away from our meeting?  Effective networking opens the door to inspiration because we meet people who have ideas and resources that we lack.  Then, this inspiration leads to motivation and motivation leads to action.  Stephen’s observation that professional organizations—the ORIGINAL Social Media—are seeing renewed interest and involvement was especially encouraging.

Being part of a professional organization provides opportunities for all those things to happen—networking, inspiration, motivation, and action.  As Andreas Udbye, current Mt. Rainier IMA president, gave the tribute to Dawne Swanson, past president of the Chapter, I was reminded of how Dawne’s enthusiasm inspired me when I was serving as Tacoma AFWA’s secretary.  At that time, the Tacoma AFWA group was faltering and almost closed the Chapter.  She reached out to us at that time and suggested that we join forces with Mt. Rainier IMA.  The joint meetings that we held in the 2016-17 year kept our chapter going, and perhaps without her realizing it, she inspired me to take on the role as Tacoma AFWA President in Summer 2017.  I feel deep gratitude for the ideas and topic suggestions she shared with me as I moved into my chapter leadership position last year.  I am excited to be working with the Mt. Rainier IMA group again this year.  Together, we are stronger!

We were very grateful to have Chris Aquino [IMA's Bellevue based Business Development Manager] and his lovely wife with us.  We appreciate his sharing about CMA credentials and his professional experiences.  Several students lingered after the meeting to talk with him and to review other materials that were available on the display tables.

The student ambassadors who shared the Wiley and Becker materials also did a fantastic job.

To learn more about our organizations, go to:

https://mtrainier.imanet.org/home?ssopc=1

https://www.afwatacoma.org

We most likely won’t have our Tacoma AFWA website updated with December meeting details until after Thanksgiving.  However, I am attaching our December meeting flier so that you can save the date.  Lisa’s presentation promises to be really fun as well.  And we will be having a gift exchange and toy drive for those who wish to participate.  More details will be forthcoming on social media and our website soon.

We hope to see you in December!

Best regards,

Dee Freeland

Tacoma AFWA President http://www.afwatacoma.org

September, 2018: 
Our local chapter is still kicking, and after a quiet 2017-18 season, we are now ramping up the activity level again. As for events, the board of directors has decided to piggyback on the Tacoma chapter of AFWA's programming (Accounting and Financial Women's Alliance, open to everybody). Over the years it has become more difficult for both organizations to attract sizable crowds to the meetings, so it makes sense for us to join forces in putting on interesting and relevant events. The joint events will be posted on this website as they materialize. 

The Mt. Rainier chapter will also prioritize the development and support of local accounting students, both by sending students to IMA's annual Student Conference (this year in November) and by holding one or two events on college campuses, primarily PLU and UPS. 

To maintain chapter status we will also offer a 2-hour ethics program some time this winter. 

While the driving forces over the next year will be accounting colleague Kris Parsons (a PLU professor) and myself (a UPS professor), we retain a full board with four officers and at-large members. We hope to see you at one of our joint AFWA/IMA events over the next year!

Sincerely,

Andreas Udbye, Ph.D., MBA
University of Puget Sound
info@mtrainierima.com