This Business Meeting took place on August 30, 2022 via Zoom.
Join host URMIA’s Executive Director, Jenny Whittington, along with guests Courtney Davis Curtis, Flo Hoskinson, Steve Stoeger-Moore, Chip Broadway, Jim Mulholland, Chauncey Fagler, Julie Groves, Teresa Ransdell, Rachel Pluviose, and Colorado Robertson, as they bring you the 2022 URMIA annual business meeting in audio format, as well as it being available to URMIA members in the library from the zoom meeting held on August 30th. The business meeting has an annual requirement for URMIA and the bylaws of the association. Listen to this detailed breakdown of URMIA’s offerings, financials, and future plans. Learn about what URMIA has to offer for you as a member and how to attend our future conferences in Baltimore in 2023 and New Orleans in 2024!
Connect with URMIA & URMIA with your network
-Share /Tag in Social Media @urmianetwork
-Not a member? Join ->www.urmia.org/join
-Email | contactus@urmia.org
Give URMIA Matters a boost:
-Give the podcast a 5 star rating
-Share the podcast - click that button!
-Follow on your podcast platform - don't miss an episode!
Thanks for listening to URMIA Matters!
This Business Meeting took place on August 30, 2022 via Zoom.
Join host URMIA’s Executive Director, Jenny Whittington, along with guests Courtney Davis Curtis, Flo Hoskinson, Steve Stoeger-Moore, Chip Broadway, Jim Mulholland, Chauncey Fagler, Julie Groves, Teresa Ransdell, Rachel Pluviose, and Colorado Robertson, as they bring you the 2022 URMIA annual business meeting in audio format, as well as it being available to URMIA members in the library from the zoom meeting held on August 30th. The business meeting has an annual requirement for URMIA and the bylaws of the association. Listen to this detailed breakdown of URMIA’s offerings, financials, and future plans. Learn about what URMIA has to offer for you as a member and how to attend our future conferences in Baltimore in 2023 and New Orleans in 2024!
Connect with URMIA & URMIA with your network
-Share /Tag in Social Media @urmianetwork
-Not a member? Join ->www.urmia.org/join
-Email | contactus@urmia.org
Give URMIA Matters a boost:
-Give the podcast a 5 star rating
-Share the podcast - click that button!
-Follow on your podcast platform - don't miss an episode!
Thanks for listening to URMIA Matters!
Show Notes
URMIA Member Directory [member login required]
URMIA's 53rd Business Meeting- August 30, 2022
URMIA Upcoming Events Calendar
Season 3, Episode 16: Risk-free Tips for Succession Planning
Core Competencies for Higher Education Risk Managers
Guests
Courtney Davis Curtis, CPCU, ARM, ARM-E- Assistant Vice President for Risk Management and Resilience Planning, University of Chicago
Steven Stoeger-Moore- President, Districts Mutual Insurance & Risk Management Services
Chip Broadway CPA, MBA, CGMA- Vice President and Treasurer, Church Schools in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia
Jim R. Mulholland, CPA, CEBS Fellow- Assistant Vice President for Risk Management and Resilience Planning, University of Chicago
Chauncey Fagler, ARM-P- Executive Director & CRO, FCSRMC (Florida College System Risk Management Consortium)
Julie L. Groves, ARM- Director, Risk Services, Wake Forest University
Teresa Ransdell, CAE- Director of Membership & Marketing, URMIA
Rachel Pluviose- Director of Risk Management & Insurance, Johns Hopkins University
Colorado Robertson, CRM, CIC- Director of Risk Management, Mississippi State University
Host
Jenny A. Whittington, CAE, Executive Director, URMIA
Transcript
Jenny: Hello, URMIA listeners. This is Jenny Whittington coming to you from the URMIA national office. We are moments away from starting the annual conference. And while we are thrilled to have so many people joining us in Indianapolis, there are still a good number of you who are not. So, because we have some really great technology and the ability to pivot after the last two and a half years, we are thrilled to be able to bring you the 2022 URMIA annual business meeting in audio format, as well as it being available to URMIA members in the library from the zoom meeting held on August 30th. The business meeting has an annual requirement for URMIA and the bylaws of the association. As an update to the entire membership. I'm thrilled to also relate to you that we hit a record this morning. We have 2,800 individual members of URMIA. As of today, we appreciate all of our members new and renewing. This is quite an accomplishment for us. So, sit back and listen to the latest association news from your URMIA leadership.
Courtney: It is my pleasure to walk you to our business meeting on behalf of URMIA’s executive committee, we promise to make this fast and fun, and we're so happy that so many of our members have joined us today. It's really good to see you all for our first official business. We like to announce the 2023 springboard meeting will be held in conjunction with our south regional conference. URMIA has a traditionally announced this at the business meeting as an invitation to our members to get more involved. Many of you may not know that our board meetings are actually open to our members. So, this is my invitation to you to join us and to see our URMIA board really at work and get to get more involved. The board meeting will be held on Sunday, February 5th, 2023. And the Southeastern regional will be held on February 5th and 6th.
We're heading to a magical place called Orlando. And if you wanna get out of the cult, like I certainly will please make plans to join us at Disney's Coronado Springs resort in Orlando at the Walt Disney world resort. The reception will be on Sunday night in a regional conference will begin on Monday and shortly after the conference. We'll open up our call for presentation. So, we kick off one conference and get ready for the next. So, look forward to that after we finish up things in Indiana. So, if you're interested in presenting at one of our regionals or the 2023 annual conference, or write an article for insight, please submit something. Second. We have some exciting news to share. I'm also thrilled that we are announcing URMIA's 54th conference, which will be held September 9th through 13th in Baltimore Maryland, thrilled to share that our 55th annual conference will be held from September 28th to October 2nd in New Orleans.
And at the end of the call, you will hear from our chairs of those conference, Rachel Pluviose from John Hopkins university about the Baltimore conference and Colorado Robinson from Mississippi state university about the New Orleans conference. You know, it's kind of hard to believe, or I'm excited that the year of my URMIA presidency is coming to end. I'm fortunate to have only a year unlike Chauncey who served us for two, but I feel very fortunate that I've had a relatively normal year when you consider what we've experienced in the last few with the COVID. And we continue to advance the discipline of higher education, risk management, by finding ways to expand our engagement and education opportunities for our members in person and virtually of course, and including with partnering with our sister organization, as we did for our regional conference series and representing URMIA at RIMS and the NACUBO conference.
Now, as we start to frame some of our achievements as I go over our strategic plan, I'll do so around the model that I've spoken about a couple of times that being connect, know, and grow together. So, as we work to connect our members to each other throughout the strategic goal, one, we've expanded our focus to find ways with transitioning roles, for those who are transitioning to roles and risk management organizations at your institution, and kind of help you thinking about succession planning. We had delivered a podcast. We're also offering a session at the conference that will help to serve our emerging leaders. We'll also be researching the many risk management cohort or groups that exist out there to see if there's any role that URMIA can play to help facilitate in connecting those members together further. And we're also interested in continuous improvement by determining the value proposition that URMIA membership has and to guide the board and staff on what benefits we should start, stop, and continue to do.
I've conducted three firesides chats in this year to kind of aid in that effort, but we know that open feedback and dialogue is the best way to, to hear from our memberships. And we of course, always welcome you to contact any board member or staff member of the organization in an effort to expand our knowledge. We've leveraged our strategic number two, which focuses on professional development by reframing that regional conference series that I started to describe a little bit and embed all of our core competencies into our content. We also leveraged our strong relationships that we have with our sister associations, by partnering with three of them to bring our members together and person that regional conference and having that opportunity to have that cross discipline gathering with our colleagues at our own institution. It started in Atlanta at ACCEDI, the association of college conference and event directors international, and our content was focused on youth, campus, camps, conferences.
And in March, I had the opportunity to do a keynote at our Chicago conference with the great folks of ACUI, which is the association of college and university, or excuse me, union international. There are professional home to thousands of campus, community builders around the world that are primarily focused on those working with college unions and student activities filled. And I know URMIA members enjoyed the hospitality, and I know that a past president of URMIA won a huge flat screen TV in their fundraising, silent auction. That that was difficult to get home, go figure, but we get to go to a conference, meet and engage with our colleagues on campus and with one another. And so, we did the same when we partnered with ACUA, which is the association of college and university auditors in Raleigh, and had a great session in compliance, risk management and audit synergy and how we are always better together.
Now, URMIA also was represented at the NACUBO annual meeting that was in Denver, the summer board member, Tim Wiseman from University of Wyoming, did a Ted talk kind of style presentation on outcomes, managing enterprise risk management missions, essential task. He received this praise from the audience. I think this topic could have been long enough for an even deeper session and I could have had a great impact of some of those issues business officers are taking. So, kudos to Tim on that. Cause he fit a lot of content in, in about 20 to 30 minutes, which is quite remarkable. And any time that we have an opportunity to partner with NACUBO and be on their agenda, it's critical for us because we're advancing that discipline of risk management. As I keep speaking to in particular with our business officer, who many of us report into in total that regional conference series that I was speaking about educated 266 people.
We raised additional funds for scholarships and connected institutional members with affiliates through 31 education sessions and leveraged three CHEMA partnerships. You may be unfamiliar with that acronym cause I've certainly thrown a lot out there today, but CHEMA stands for the council on higher education management associations. URMIA has been an active member for many years. It's an informal voluntary assembly of management oriented, higher education associations in United States and Canada. And by sharing information together, we are able to compare our experiences, work collaboratively on projects with shared interests. CHEMA members kind of maximize the resources and create substantial benefits for the colleges and universities that they represent and really bringing them together to recognize the executive director’s longevity in this group Jenny represents URMIA and has made numerous connections throughout the years that have really added value back to URMIA as well. Additionally, we are looking to revisit our education plan and for competency models.
By the end of this year, it'll have a brand-new look and feel related to our, our URMIA resource guide. So, you may not know that years ago as a strategic goal, URMIA kind of developed this guide to those who are newer to the higher education environment, including those who may have had risk management recently added to their job responsibilities. We know this is a large segment of our membership and especially now since pandemic and post new normal conditions that we find ourselves in, we're all kind of juggling a whole lot. You know that everyone has more to do with less things to do it. And that's kind of the value we get yet to help us with that. And this goal has been in our radar for a while. And, and while we're thrilled to have another opportunity to reveal this new and improved tool for your use, but also related to no is our strategic goal three, which allows us to assess our resources and tools and make that knowledge base easier for you.
We have a brand-new library, has a new look, a new feel, and really strengthening our search functionality to just get those resources in your hands, easier for you, but growth relative to our connect know and grow together. It means so many things. And for our organization, strategic go forward, which is near and dear in my heart is about growing our DEI and belonging efforts. We've launched three new scholarships called “be the change”, which create opportunities for HBCU institutions, um, including their staff to attend our conference and receive free membership in 2023. And additionally, we have a grant to fund a student internship for a student of diverse background. I'll let you know that there's still an opportunity on this one. We have not awarded that. I also had the privilege to support and speak, add to be inaugural HBCU risk management conference that was hosted at Texas Southern university this summer and URMIA supported this conference as well.
This has actually led to some new members and some of you'll get to have an opportunity to meet at the conference, although join us for the first time. But growth also means sustainability. And we have a fifth goal to ensure that we have sustainability for the association. We've expanded the national office staff and conducted a technology audit, which brought a roadmap of a roadmap about 45 recommendations that the staff are working on. You can think of this akin to the long list of things that we have to do to maintain our insurability from a cyber perspective, but probably about 10 times more information and things to give us things to consider at. We've also taken advantage of tax credit and even explored ways to receive donations and gifts to advance our efforts, particularly in professional development area. But I'm very thankful for having your attention for this time and grateful that we've been able to accomplish all of this together. And now I'm gonna transition it to Flo Hoskinson. Who's going to give us the secretary’s report.
Flo: Thank you, Courtney. Hi URMIA members. The 2021 annual business meeting minutes from our hybrid conference were approved by the board directors at the December 8th, 2021 board directors meetings. For those of you listening, the visuals are linked to this recording in the podcast in the show notes. Also, a link to the minutes and recording were sent to each voting member. With the announcement of this meeting, all of our meeting minutes were filed are, are filed in the URMIA governance folder in the URMIA library that members can access 24/7. If anyone has comments or uh, about the minutes, please reach out to me or any board member. Now I would like to ask Steve Stoeger-Moore to do our parliamentary report. Thanks.
Steve: Hello. Thank you very much. Greetings and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Steve Stoeger-Moore. It has been my great pleasure to serve as the board parliamentarian this year, we have had no changes in our bylaws. As a reminder, the bylaws were completely rewritten in 2018 and then launched in 2019. And these documents continue to serve the organization very well. One change we did implement in the last year's asking all of our board members to disclose any conflicts of interests and do this on a much more regular basis. We used to do this one time per year in accordance with filing our form 990. However, we started to do this at every meeting. We share this information with the executive committee, all our governing documents are up to date on the website. I'm sorry to report that. I will not be able to join you at the annual conference in Indianapolis this year. I do hope that you all have a wonderful, productive, and enjoyable conference experience. I do look forward to seeing you all at the board meeting in the Southern regional conference meeting in Orlando on February 5 to 6. I hope to see you then. Let me now introduce Chip Broadway and Jim Mulholland to give the treasurer's report, gentlemen. Good afternoon.
Chip: Thank you, Steve. Good afternoon. I'm Chip Broadway. It's been my pleasure to serve as treasurer. Please see the 20, 21 and 2020 financials on the screen. And for those of you listening, the visuals are linked to this recording. I will be reviewing a summary of our financials and Jim will be informing the membership that the board approved a dues increase for 2023 overall. And in spite of the impact of COVID 19 and everything required to endure it, the fiscal year 2021 resulted in another significant operating surplus in the statement of financial position for the second year in a row, we finished ahead of the prior fiscal year. We had $196,580 more in cash primarily because of strong, prepaid FY 22 dues. The fair market value of our investments totaled 2.824 million, an increase of $374,000 over the prior year amidst a very volatile market.
At December 31st, 2021, total assets were 3.724 million up $575,000 over December of 2020. In the statement of activities, we are ending well ahead of where we were at the same time, last year, and much better than expected. We budgeted for a deficit of $52,591. And we ended the year with a surplus of $364,743, which is a total positive swing of $417,000. These positive results were a combination of strong revenues across all segments, dues, regional and national conferences and investments. The management team did an excellent job of also controlling his expenses, amidst the global pandemic. Great job, Jenny, and team. I will now turn over to Jim, URMIA’s new treasurer, to report on dues.
Jim: Hello everyone. I'm Jim Mulholland and I'm the assistant treasurer. I'm from Grinnell college. The URMIA community has become even more important during these past three years and the organization's commitment to the higher education risk management profession has grown stronger as we are all aware. Inflation is real. URMIA has added a full-time staff member and has several technology improvements in the pipeline that require us to increase our dues. URMIA has provided more learning opportunities on the industry's hottest topics through webinars and other online conferences, facilitated online community discussions among members on campus issues and challenges, hosted conversations with our affiliate member experts about changes in the insurance industry, presented tutorials on a wide variety of higher education risk to management topics, increased URMIA’s library’s offerings of templates, policies, scenarios, and plans from members use in crafting similar programs for their own campuses, coordinated round table discussions for institutional members, offered savings opportunities on a student property insurance program featured URMIA's affiliate members in the affiliate member service directory, connecting service providers and universities, supported a risk management study group for members interested in earning the ARM designation, diversified the delivery of information resources to better match members preferences, including the addition of a podcast and online conferences. URMIA's newest offering is compliment the benefits higher education risk managers were already enjoying as organizational members.
The commitment to connection, innovation, and education hasn't wavered and remains integral to the organization's future growth. With all of this in mind, the increased cost of day-to-day operations and support needed for URMIA's future initiatives, necessitate a dues increase. The increase allows us to bring you even more value for your membership. The dues will not increase proportionately. When we looked at our due structure, we noticed that the larger schools with the most members were paying the least per person. We concluded to start charging $190 per person for institutions above tier three membership. Tiers one, two, and three will not see an increase because they're already paying more than $190 per person. As a site note, if you're not making URMIA member benefits available to as many on campus, as allotted in your membership tier, consider inviting colleagues on your campus to take advantage of their resources URMIA has to offer. We know that finances are tight, but this is a necessary step to keep URMIA moving forward. We also have an emergency fund available through the generous support of our affiliate members to help institutional members who need assistance, contact Jenny at the national office for details. Thank you. I introduce you to Chauncey Fagler, who is, uh, over the leadership development, who will deliver the leadership development reports.
Chauncey: Thanks Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome I'm Chauncey Fagler and I'm here in my capacity as the leadership development committee chair. This role is done by the immediate past president of URMIA. This is part of our governance and it's a great way to transition from being super involved to a little less involved. It's a very important duty because the committee is finding the future leaders of URMIA. First, I'd like to thank the members of the committee who work together to find such a wonderful slate of candidates. Amy Daley from FM global, Sam Florio from Santa Clara university, Sue Liden, Pacific Lutheran university, Keesha Trim, university of Richmond and Matt Tuttle from the university of Utah. Thanks to you all on behalf of the LDC, I would like to extend our, thanks to all our colleagues who answered the call and ran in the URMIA election.
Thank you to all who voted. That's also very necessary. We had a great turnout. We had terrific slate of candidates, and the future of URMIA is in very good hands. Please join me in congratulating the following: president elect Craig McAllister from the university of Miami. Or if you’re from Florida, you might say the university of Mi-ami. Okay. And then our board directors by the three year terms, Juan Azcarate from Texas Wesleyan university, Pamela Jeffries from the university of Tennessee system and Susan Johnson from Iowa state university, and Matt Tuttle from the university of Utah will serve a one year term, congratulations to you all and our sincere thanks and appreciation to all the members of our community who continue to volunteer their time to serve in many different capacities to make our association the best it can be. Thanks again. It is also my pleasure to recognize the outstanding efforts of Chip Broadway.
As he has completed his four-year terms treasurer. He started his term of service in 2018 and has been an excellent volunteer. Understand that Chip cannot attend the conference in person in Indy. So, look for a tribute to his service online, and please chime in with your thanks. Chip has been hands on for URMIA doing a stellar job with managing our finances and being a great resource for Jenny and the full board of directors. URMIA developed a model to have an assistant treasurer and have that role. And the current treasure overlap for a smooth transition chip has done a great job training Jim Mulholland for success and created a better process for URMIA by outsourcing additional financial duties to have the staff more focused on members' needs versus administration. We also have one board member who is completing her service, Karen Kruppa from Suffolk university. Karen has been an active board member and participated in several task forces and been a valuable resource. We will be honoring Karen in person in Indy. Now I'll turn it over to Julie Groves.
Julie: Hi everyone. I'm Julie Groves, the president elect of URMIA, and the director of risk services at Wake Forest university. Now, before I go on, do we have some prizes to give away?
Teresa: Yes, we do. Yes, we do. So, Julie, could you pick a number between one and 72? And for those of you who are following along in the participants list, um, I have taken the board members and the staff members out of contention. So that's why the numbers don't jive just in the interest of transparency.
Julie: Okay. Well, let's, let's look at number 54, who's number 54?
Teresa: 54 is Paul McCann from Eastern Illinois.
Julie: Paul McCann. Congratulations, Paul. Do we have one more?
Teresa: Yes, Julie, let's go ahead and give away one more.
Julie: Perfect. Do you want me to pick another number?
Teresa: Another number between one and 72, please?
Julie: Let's go for, uh, 27.
Teresa: 27 is Jeff Chasen.
Julie: Jeff. Congratulations.
That's great. So, URMIA will be in touch with you all about your prizes. So, we will continue on, uh, with our meeting. I think we'll be given away a couple more prizes toward the end of the meeting, but you just heard Chauncey Fagler recognize the other outgoing board members, but I wanted to take a minute to recognize that Chauncey has been on URMIA as board of directors since 2016 and served an unprecedented two-year term as president during the pandemic, which we greatly appreciated. Chauncey has agreed to stay on to help lead our fifth strategic goal. So, he's not going far, but we wanted to make sure we thanked him for his extraordinary service. Thanks Chauncey. I've been a member of the executive committee for almost a year. Now we meet once a month and we really have a handle on the work of the association.
And here's a fun fact. The president elect gets to review all the URMIA contracts before we sign them. Like I didn't get enough of that at Wake Forest, but seriously URMIA's government, governance works really well. And I am proud of the work they've done. The executive committee has oversight of the national office in conjunction with Jenny Whittington, our executive director. If you have not met our team yet, you should, they are all on zoom with us today. So, you all please wave when I introduce you. Jenny Whittington is our executive director. Ronna Papesh is our director of information technology. Lou Drapeau is our resource manager and the person on the other end of the ask Lou button, Michelle Smith is our senior director of events. Gary Langdale is our education manager. Theresa Ransdell is our director of membership and marketing. And Rachel Kuper is our learning specialist. The office also has two wonderful student workers, Bri and Lea from Indiana university to help support the mission of URMIA.
The staff is always there to answer any questions for you. If you want to know more about what goes on our monthly meetings are filed in the URMIA governance folder in the URMIA library. So, feel free to check them out. Sometime here are a couple of fun facts about URMIA. We are really growing. We are at a record 2,775 members representing more than 850 campuses. Just think we could be 3000 individuals strong by the end of the year. This is amazing because when I first got involved with URMIA in 2008, there were about 1400 individuals. So, we've doubled in size. Now Jenny did this graphic, and I cautioned you from looking at it and thinking that I personally had anything to do with the doubling in size. I mean, maybe I did, but I don't think so. So, I just, I wanna just give that a little word of warning on that.
Please help us grow by telling your campus colleagues about us. As Jim mentioned, if you're not making URMIA membership benefits available to as many on campus, as allotted in your membership here, consider inviting colleagues on your campus to take advantage of the resources URMIA has to offer. This is a great way to justify the membership return on investment. I think we all know the more folks we empower with the tools from URMIA, the better protected our campuses are. So spread the URMIA love. Last, I will share one of my favorite army resources. Have you listened to our URMIA Matters podcast yet? I have been happy to be one of the hosts of the podcast for the last couple of years, they keep calling me a guest host, but I really don't feel like I should be anymore. I think I should be one of the permanent host in rotation.
Just putting that out there. We've had over 8,052 listens so far and we've released 72 episodes year. One of the podcasts primarily featured association news, but we've added a steady stream of risk management topics. 74% of listens come on a mobile device, mostly the apple iPhone, cuz that's the best phone to have, but this is down 11% from December 2021. So, more people are listening on the computer, which makes sense, cuz folks are returning to work. I'm sure this has to do with the whole office everyone's returned to work. So, the podcast is a great way to stay up to date with army news and stay connected. Interestingly, while army is heavily weighted in the us, we've been listened to from 58 countries and territories. The top places are Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Columbus, Ohio. Thanks so much for your attention and thanks to the national office for all the hard work they do on behalf of our members. So, I now like to invite Rachel Pluviose from Johns Hopkins university to tell us about Baltimore in 2023.
Rachel: Thanks Julie though. As a Samsung user, I have to say between iPhone and Samsung, I mean I've had an iPhone actually, and it's the same thing. They do the same thing just in different ways. That's all, but it's all good.
Julie: I miss my Blackberry. I miss my Blackberry
Rachel: <laugh> oh, that's a flash from the past indeed. So good afternoon, everyone. Hopefully everyone is so excited about coming to Baltimore in 2023, Julie did a great job introducing me. So, I won't go through that again. Apparently, I have an alter ego and she raises her hand to volunteer for things unbeknownst to me. So, I filled out a form in March of 2020 saying Baltimore would be a great place to come for conference, completely forgot about it. And lo and behold, Jenny contacted me in February and was like, hey, you filled out this form. So, would you be willing to help us host for 2023 in Baltimore? And I said, sure, why not? Now? I don't know if you're able to fully see the backdrop in my picture, but that is Harbor east, which is a location where we will be staying. We did great site visits and chose to go to the, um, Baltimore Marriott on the waterfront.
And that's the hotel that's I guess all the way to the far right of my screen or be looking at it yes. On the right-hand side. So, we'll be right on the water. Great water views. Lots of restaurants and attractions national aquarium is right there. So many things to see in the area as well. Harbor east also has a lot of nice shops as well. So, we are excited and hopefully everyone will be eager to come mark your calendar September 9th through the 13th, you guys are more than welcome to be at Bmore. And this is a new Yorker who's saying this born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. So, if I'm telling y'all that b-more, is the place to be, you can pretty much trust that it's accurate. Cuz as you know, new Yorkers, we think the world revolves around New York cuz it does sort of kind of anyway, looking forward to seeing everyone in Indianapolis and September 9th to 13th, Bmore is the spot.
Julie: Thanks Rachel. It looks really exciting. Beautiful Baltimore is a beautiful city, so we can't wait to go there. So, I'm gonna turn it over, uh, to Colorado Robertson for a little quick view into our 2024 annual conference.
Colorado: Julie, thanks for the introduction. And as y'all can see, we're gonna be leaving behind the blue waters of Baltimore Harbor and traveling to the banks of the muddy Mississippi river in New Orleans, Louisiana, or as the cool kids like to say NOLA, uh, we'll be there for our 55th conference, which will be Saturday, September the 28th through Wednesday, October 2nd. The second we've been trying to make it to the Big Easy for quite a while. Now I think it was originally scheduled to be our 2022 conference, but we've been able to have to push that back, uh, a few times due to the pandemic, but just like everything, what we had to wait for the good times, but it'll soon be here, and we'll be soon in New Orleans in 2024. Our home base will be the New Orleans Marriott, which is right at the edge of the historic French quarter.
Uh, and the conference committee over the next two years will be working to bring some of Nola's unique experience in, into the conference, the flavors, the sounds, the sites of NOLA and making those and incorporating those into the conference. But we also hope that you find the time to get out and immerse yourselves in the city, uh, will be just a few blocks away from Jackson square, which is the heart of the French quarter. The Mississippi river walk, home of cafe Du monde. The American queen river boat, uh, will also be just a short trolley ride away to the Tom Hanks endorsed national war II museum. And I also know from past experiences going out New Orleans a few times that you're gonna find interesting people in places everywhere is in between. So again, put your, uh, market calendars for the 54th and the 55th annual conference in NOLA on September the 28th through October 2nd, laissez les bon temps rouler, and back to you, Julie,
Julie: Thank you, Colorado. That looks really great. I mean I think our next few years are gonna be packed with a lot of great opportunities. So, thanks to Rachel and Colorado, both for giving us a little peak into the future. So, I wanna turn it back over to Courtney Davis, Curtis.
Courtney: That's thank you all so very much. And thank you Julie. We did promise a shorten sweet and fun meeting and we meant it. Uh, if you have any questions about anything that we presented, please reach out to me or any member of the executive committee or the staff. We're really proud of the strategic work that we've accomplished this year and look forward to continuing our progress on these strategic goals. And we also hope to see many of you in Indianapolis at the conference or online virtual for the virtual conference. Again, I wanna extend my appreciation to all of you for being a member of URMIA and supporting higher education risk management insurance.