As NORDP members gear up for the Annual Conference in Bellevue, WA, we take time to celebrate a set of three volunteers who led the effort to make NORDP’s first post-pandemic, in-person conference in 2023 a reality. Anne Maglia, past president of NORDP, says she was thrilled to recognize the leadership of Becca Latimer, Jessica Brassard, and Jessica Moon, co-chairs of the that conference with the 2023 President’s Commendation Award.
Latimer is the research program director in the University of Virginia’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. Brassard is director for research development and communication at Michigan Technological University. Moon is executive director for the Stanford Longevity, Equity, and Aging Research Consortium. Together, they spent hundreds of hours and worked with dozens of volunteers to make the 2023 Annual Conference a rousing success.
Maglia says that she is extremely grateful for the drive and commitment of these three NORDP leaders. They epitomize the volunteer spirit of the organization and were the obvious choice for this very special award, she says.
“Returning to our in-person conference in 2023 presented unique challenges, and these three were undaunted and went way, way above and beyond expectations. They set up sustainable systems and devoted hundreds of hours of their precious time to bring NORDP back together in person,” Maglia says.
The three awardees agree that the systems created before them and the NORDP volunteers who support this massive undertaking are keys to their “success.” For example, conference committees historically have co-chairs. Each year, at least one co-chair continues from the year prior, and two other co-chairs are added to the team. The conference committee includes nine sub-committees, and each of the co-chairs oversees three of them.
The structure allows for strong relationships to build. Latimer, who was a co-chair of the NORDP virtual conference in 2022, laughingly says that the “two Jesses were the first I talked to when I woke up and the last before I went to bed.”
The updated conference committee structure allows them to have a tie-breaker for difficult decisions and to bring a diverse set of skills to the task. The structure also allows for a solid succession plan from year to year and for synergy to build between committee volunteers.
“So many of us in NORDP are here because we want to be engaged in research development,” Latimer says. “We want to help, mentor, learn, share, and advance RD. I like to live like that, and I enjoy being surrounded by people with those same values,” Latimer says about her colleagues.
Moon and Brassard had worked on the subcommittees on the 2022 virtual conference, and they both stepped up when Latimer asked them to help lead the 2023 conference. (The 2024 conference leadership includes Brassard, Moon, and Katherine Duggan. Latimer is the new lead of the Executive Conference Committee, a position usually taken by the exiting co-chair).
Moon describes the committee structure “small but mighty” and “nimble,” and she says that the three co-chairs “took care of each other,” stepping in and respecting boundaries when needed.
Brassard adds that the group of three led from their strengths based upon the unique skills each brought to the team. She encourages NORDP members to engage in this year’s conference activities, as schedules allow. She says she intentionally “gave myself permission to share my skills, to grow into the organization.” She calls the award for this work “icing on the cake” – the cake being the sense of community and pride that pulling off the 2023 conference afforded.
Watch for a call for volunteers to assist with conference activities and for other exciting announcements from this year’s conference committee.
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