IABC fosters the opportunity to connect

Last week Thursday, Executive VP of IABC T&T, Maria Rivas Mc Millan, and VP of Membership, Giselle La Ronde West and I shared a wonderful Thai lunch with the incoming chair of IABC Canada East Region, Rawle Borrel and his wife Abiola. Both are of T&T parentage but spent the majority of their lives in Canada.

We spent some time talking about IABC but most of it was spent chatting about our families, spouses, and our homes, what I like the call the real life stuff. Directly after our lunch, I told Maria that I felt as if I just had lunch with some old friends.

One of the real strong bonus points for me as a Chapter leader is the quality of global relationships I have struck up through IABC. When my husband and I vacation in Canada later this month we will be staying at the charming apartment of an IABC friend who is out of town for that very same week.

I met my friend Katherine Shelley from Toronto through IABC. Katherine, who comes to Trinidad every year for our world famous Carnival emailed me two years ago because she wanted to connect with other local IABC members. We hit it off immediately.

When I journey to New Orleans for the international conference in June, I am looking forward to attending the majority of the seminars on measurement & ROI but I am equally excited about connecting with the friends and colleagues I met earlier this year at IABC’s Leadership Institute in San Diego

When people ask me what drives me to continuously work at leading such a wonderful chapter, my answer is very simple...it really is all about the opportunity to connect.

IABC Trinidad and Tobago takes communications centre stage

The Trinidad and Tobago Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators will host the breakfast meeting, Taking communications centre stage: Forging new paradigms for the profession on March 29, 2007 from 7.00 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. at the Tourism Development Company, which is located at Maritime Plaza, Barataria (Trinidad).

Taking communications from the periphery to the inner circle of decision-making is a huge achievement. Ask Anna-Maria Garcia-Brooks, General Manager – Group Marketing and Communications at Republic Bank Limited, who has made the envied step from middle management to executive management. As one of the event’s feature speakers, Garcia-Brooks will discuss how communicators can give their function that quantum leap. Joining her for this discussion will be Dr Godfrey Steele, academic pioneer and lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), who successfully established UWI’s bachelor’s in communications programme, and is responsible for training future communicators.

Book your space, and learn:
· how to become more visible
· techniques to make the communication discipline more strategic
· how to make communications matter to your CEO/ senior executives
· the applicability of academia to practice
· intellectual foundations for communications.
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The attendance fee for IABC Members is TT$300, and TT$350 for non-members. To register, call Jane Sadaphal at 621-3830 or email iabctt@gmail.com.