Garden City, NY (PRWEB) January 26, 2012
On January 10th at 4pm, the Minneapolis NAPW Chapter met for a general networking meeting at the Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BBBS) headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Sabra Brown, the Minneapolis Chapter President kicked off the meeting by welcoming attendees and thanking Joni Davis for arranging the meeting at the BBBS facility and for coordinating a briefing by a BBBS staff member. Afterward, she encouraged the attendees to introduce themselves.
Members attending included Sabra Brown, the Chapter President and Chief of Public Affairs for the 934th Airlift Wing. Her unit is the only Air Force Reserve wing in the state and is host to approximately 5,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Reservists, as well as Air National Guard.
Joni Davis, Sales Engineer for Diversified Plastics Incorporated. Jonis companys principal products and services include custom plastic injecting molding.
Kris Pearson, Realtor Senior Advisor for Keller Williams Integrity Realty Lakes. Her specialty is helping seniors sell their homes when they have to move to a senior living community.
Sue Manning, Holistic Health and Wellness Coach, was trained in more than 100 dietary theories and studied a variety of practical lifestyle coaching methods. She started her business to help people create personalized roadmaps to health based on their individual needs.
Dawn Stebbing, Fashion and Beauty Expert with Image Evolution, has expertise in color, style/fit, personal shopping, closet audits along with core passion coaching and assessment.
Faith Richardson is with Nacel Open Door, an organization that places foreign exchange students in American homes. This cultural exchange program supports over 4,000 students and families, coming from more than twenty countries.
Marianne Badar Ohman, of Creative Connections, trained in communications and shared with the group that she was a foreign exchange student in Venezuela, so she can identify with Faiths organization.
Guests in attendance included Ade Shosanya, who works at a Maple Grove hospital. She wanted to attend a few meetings to better understand the benefits before joining.
Shannon McGinnis is an author, consultant, and speaker with Organized4Success. She is interested in networking with other women and is considering joining this chapter.
Kelly Robinson is a Senior Clinical Trainer with Medtronic. She just moved here from Atlanta and wanted to find out what NAPW had to offer her.
The chapter hosted a speaker from the BBBS staff. Luke discussed the need for bigs especially males. The program is vital to mentoring children and is not based on economic or ethnic needs. He educated the women on some highlights of the program, like the fact that children who have a positive mentor are more confident in their schoolwork performance, able to get along better with their families, are 46 percent less likely to begin using illegal drugs, are 27 percent less likely to begin using alcohol, and are 52 percent less likely to skip school. The organization has several programs in addition to the bigs and littles such as mentoring children of incarcerated parents and providing scholarships to the littles.
The chapter also discussed current business. Sabra Brown described the networking and continuing education opportunities NAPW offers and passed out a list of seminars offered by Star 12 in the upcoming months in the Twin Cities area. She also discussed the various member benefits of being a part of NAPW.
Sabra advised the group that the chapters events are now listed on EventBrite.com to better track RSVPs and attendance. She advised members to please use this site to sign up for meetings. The December meetings door prize winner was Terri Rea.
Sabra also discussed the success of the last months charitable efforts. She said, We collected more than 150 clothing and accessory items for Dress for Success Twin Cities!
The chapter intends to collect clothing for Dress For Success at the next meeting. Members were advised to bring gently used, clean business attire and assessories to donate. They will also collect DVDs to send to deployed military personnel in Southwest Asia.
Members decided that they wanted to keep meeting day and time consistent each month. A vote was taken among members in attendance and it was agreed that all future monthly meetings will be the third Tuesday of each month at 4:30pm for ninety minutes. Locations will still vary throughout the Twin Cities area to best accommodate as many members as possible, Sabra said.
Members also like the idea of Simply Networking events held quarterly. The next Simply Networking event will be at the Liffey in St. Paul on March 20th from 5-7pm. The next monthly networking meeting will be held at the office of Kris Pearson at Keller Williams Realty in Minneapolis on February 9th at 4pm.
Each month, a Minneapolis Chapter Member wins the Traveling Vase with a goodie included from the previous winner. That winner is then responsible for bringing it in to the next months meeting. Kris Pearson, the winner of the Traveling Vase (TV) in November, brought the TV to the meeting filled with chocolates to give away to this months winner, Kelly Robinson.
Sabra Brown thanked everyone for attending and encouraged women to bring a friend to the next meeting.
The National Association of Professional Women (NAPW) is the largest and most recognized network of female professionals. NAPW provides a forum where women can interact, exchange ideas, educate, network, and empower. NAPW Local Chapters allow members to maximize their experience through meetings, networking opportunities, and professional events.
For additional information regarding the NAPW Minneapolis Local Chapter and/or NAPW please visit http://www.napw.com.
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