Episode 10: 2020 Regional Conference Series

Is a regional conference right for you? Host Jenny Whittington explores the special qualities of URMIA’s regional conferences with Julie Groves, director of risk services at Wake Forest University and co-chair of the 2020 URMIA Eastern Regional Conference in Raleigh, NC. Their wide-ranging discussion covers the unique characteristics of URMIA’s regional conferences, what to expect as an attendee, and why these conferences are such a wonderful opportunity for members and potential members as a first URMIA conference experience.

Show Notes [member-only content, login required]

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!

Transcript

Jenny: Hello everybody and welcome to URMIA matters. I am Jenny Whittington, URMIAs executive director, and I am so pleased today to have one of our board members, Julie Groves from Wake Forest, with us. Today we’re going to talk about the regional conference series. So, Julie, I’d love you to introduce yourself- give a little bit of background about how you got involved in higher education risk management and URMIA, and then we will talk about the regional conference series, so take it away Julie, and welcome. 

Julie: Great. Thank you, Jenny, I’m glad to be here. I am the director of risk services at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I have been at the University for almost 21 years. I am a graduate of Wake Forest University, and I am a third generation graduate of the University, so after spending some time at a local bank, I came back to the University in 1999 and it was something that I had always wanted to do, work for the University, obviously it’s been a good gig because I’m still here and I don’t think they want to get rid of me quite yet.

Jenny: When you were growing up, did you say, “I want to grow up and be a risk manager”?

Julie: I did not. I had no idea what a risk manager was, and in fact I have degrees in English, so I got a job at Wachovia Bank as a trust administrator because they needed people who could read documents well and follow the restrictions and rules in the documents, and a position opened up at Wake Forest for a trust administrator, and so I had applied for that position and got it and after I had been here about 9 months my boss came to me and said the person who does insurance has too much to do so you’re going to have to do that now too. So, I sort of stumbled into this career, but it’s been really great, and I enjoy it a lot.  

Jenny: Terrific and tell me about how you got involved with URMIA. I know you’re a current board member, and I’ve known you for a number of years, but what was your entry way into URMIA? 

Julie: Well I had been looking at different associations to be a part of, and my broker at the time, my client exec at the time at Marsh, suggested that I check out URMIA, and I did. I signed up, started looking at the URMIA information online and I went to the annual conference that year, and ever since then I’ve been involved. So, that was in 2008 in Washington D.C.. 

Jenny: Terrific and you were involved in the communications committee, right? Is that your early involvement? 

Julie: Correct. Yes, I signed up for the communications committee at the Washington conference. So, I was on the for several years, and then I chaired it for several years, so it was a great committee to be on; we had a great group of people. 

Jenny: Awesome. Well, again, it’s so great to have you with us today, and we’re going to be focusing on our regional conference series. I wanted to just start with a general explanation about our regional conferences. So, I get this question a lot and I have over the years, people, members and nonmembers alike, will ask whether URMIA has defined regions and the quick answer is no, but that we have this regional conference series that we move around the United States, then even a year or two ago we went to Canada. So, we like to move these conferences around the U.S. to get to all of our members, basically. So, we call it a regional conference series, but we’re not defined by the region. Now, it does so happen that the people that attend these conferences are from the local region, but we do invite the whole membership to go to any of the conferences. Some of the content might be specific to the region, but in general if it’s more convenient to you to not go to one that’s in your backyard, if you had a trip to that city, it is very acceptable, and we like to see the furthest traveling member to each regional. So,  I just wanted to set the record straight that you can attend any of the regional conferences, whether you reside in California and you want to go to North Carolina or any of those things. So, Julie, let’s talk about your experience as the conference chair, will you tell me a little bit about that? 

Julie: I had been to the regional conference, the Northeast regional conference, several years ago, and I thought it was a great way to have a short amount of time away from the office to spend, and really a great way to network with a smaller group of people, and I felt like there was nothing closer to North Carolina than most of the Eastern regional conferences. Northeastern regional conferences had been in the New England area, so I sort of lobbied for an Eastern or sort of Southern regional conference since last year. We were able to have our first Eastern regional conference I think in some time, and it was held in Richmond, Virginia, and I was the chair of that, and I really enjoyed that. It’s a different experience than the annual conference, and this year I’m co-chairing the Eastern regional conference in Raleigh, so it’s just a great time to be together with a smaller group of people and a more concentrated list of topics. The topics are- there is one track the entire time; It’s different than the annual conference in that the annual conference has concurrent sessions running all day long, and sometimes its overwhelming trying to figure out which track to go to. With the regional conference, there is one session all day long broken up into smaller sessions and so you don’t have to choose because that’s what you get to go to. It makes it a little easier. 

Jenny: Yeah, and the regionals, I mean my first URMIA conference was a regional conference and it was back in Chicago a long time ago, and back in those days it would be you know, typical that we might have 40-60 people at our regional conferences. So, these days our regionals can be a little bit bigger, we expect probably a minimum of 75 people, and in the Northeast, in the Boston area specifically, we’ve had upwards of 200 people. At that one we do run two separate tracks typically, not always, but it usually works out that way. So, tell us a little bit about your co-chairing rally because Lynn is kind of a new person to helping organize our conferences, I know she’s been really supportive and bringing a lot of people from her system.

Julie: Yes, Lynn works for the University of North Carolina System, which is a large system of the Universities in North Carolina, the public universities in North Carolina. I believe there are 18 member institutions of that university system, and Lynn has done a great job of drumming up interest within the University of North Carolina System. We have a lot of folks who may not have been at a regional conference before who are attending just because of Lynn’s enthusiasm. She has been great to work with; she is very enthusiastic, and she has gotten into this and rolled her sleeves up. She’s not ever attended an URMIA regional before, so she has done a great job rallying the troops to get folks interested in this conference.

Jenny: Ok, so let’s go back and let’s talk about the actual schedule of the Eastern regional. It kicks off on February 27th. Why don’t you just tell us about the agenda? 

Julie: Well, we had a lot of great submissions. We had a lot of folks who wanted to present at this conference, and so we’re doing the traditional conference, which begins with lunch and then we have about a day’s worth of sessions. So, we go through from lunch through 4:30 on the first day. We have some meet-and-greet dinners that night, and then the next day we start again with breakfast at 7:30 and we go until noon, but because we had some really good submissions, we are doing a preconference session on risky business- how ERM supercharges organizational performance management, so anyone is welcome to come to that for a slight additional fee- it’s not included in the general conference registration fee, but we think it’s going to be really good. So, for those who are coming for that, the registration begins at 9 o’clock, so you will basically be there from 9 until 4:30 the first day when we have our sponsor-hosted reception, and then the next morning will start with breakfast, then go to the closing at noon. It’s really a little more than a full day at a conference, but it’s a lot packed into it, but it’s very valuable information.

Jenny: Yeah, and the session I know that we are going to kick off with the managing hard insurance market, which I know is been a hot topic among our members. What are the other topics you guys are including? 

Julie: We are going to be talking about creating a risk network and experiential education and we’re going to be talking about cybersecurity, which is always something that’s on everybody’s top list of risks. We are talking about something very interesting later in the afternoon on the first day. We’re talking about viruses, vaccines, and mold, stopping the spread and managing legal risk, and for those of us especially in the South who have humid weather, mold is always something that is an issue for us. The second day we’re going to be talking about crisis management planning for study abroad and we’re going to be wrapping it up with deadly weapon event- what do you wish you had done yesterday, so it’s thinking through how we can plan for things before they happen and not second guess them afterwards. 

Jenny: Those are great topics and, you know, the coronavirus that everybody is dealing with right now, I’m sure that will come up in that session as well as a lot of networking and conversation that we will have while we’re there. So, that lineup sounds really good. Now, you mentioned some meet-and-greet dinners, tell me about how that’s going to function. 

Julie: So, the way meet-and-greet dinners function is we have folks that are on the Eastern regional committee, they volunteered to take a small group of 10-12 folks to a nearby restaurant. It’s completely optional so if you’re sort of an introvert and you are tired of seeing people, you are welcome to go back to your room and eat from room service, but if you like to have an opportunity to get to talk to folks in a little bit smaller of a group, then I encourage  you, if you’re coming to one of these conferences, to sign up for one of these dinners, and generally the way that works is we will make an announcement and have  some information about which restaurants and who is leading groups to these certain restaurants, and then you can just sign up to join one of these groups. It’s, everybody pays for themselves, but it’s a great way to have a smaller group time with folks and to really network and make connections with a smaller group of folks. 

Jenny: That’s terrific, and had referenced earlier, my first URMIA conference was a Chicago regional, and those dinners are a lot of fun. It is a great way to do some informal networking, and really get to know our members, and if you’re new to URMIA, if you’re a nonmember, it’s a great way to kind of check us out and see, you know, what URMIA membership is all about and the camaraderie between members. So, the regional sounds great. I’m looking forward to attending in Raleigh. The hotel, I believe, is a brand-new property, right? 

Julie: It’s fairly new, yes. I have not been there but folks from the URMIA home office have checked it out and they’ve said it’s very nice. It looks nice online.

Jenny: Terrific. So, we are going to switch gears a tiny bit and talk about the other regionals that are in our lineup this year. So, they include the Western regional that’s taking place March 12th and 13th, and we are looking forward to going to the Citizen Hotel there in Sacramento, and that schedule is fully up online if anybody wants to check out their schedule. They’re real similar to the schedule that Julie has gone through for the Eastern regional, although they are not doing a pre-con optional event, but I know that they are also doing the meet-and-greet dinners there, and we’ve gotten a lot of great information about the local restaurants there in Sacramento. Do you have anything to add about the Western regional, Julie? 

Julie: I don’t. 

Jenny: Ok, I think they are repeating a couple of the sessions. They are doing the managing the hard market, I believe there as well. So, you guys should check out that conference, and then we are going to a different area of the country, the Northeast regional, which is happening on April 15th and 16th, is moving the Philadelphia this year. Julie had talked about attending the Northeast regional, and we’ve had it in the Boston area for many a-year, and the Babson Executive Conference Center has been our home many a-time, but the last couple years, we’ve been in Providence, and this year we are checking out Philadelphia and Lisa Zimmaro from Temple is our chair there. So, that conference schedule is online, and we encourage everybody to check it out. They do have, they are doing a pre-conference session there, so check that out, and they do run two tracks there, so please check that out. And then our last conference of the year will be in Cincinnati, and it is taking place on May 18th and 19th, and it is being co-chaired by Anita Ingram from University of Cincinnati and Robin Oldfield from University of Dayton. I did want to give a plug for new members and people that haven’t checked out a regional conference, and Julie you did this a little bit yourself, this is a great way to get your foot in the door, at a regional conference. It’s much smaller, a much smaller environment, much more intimate. Things happen at a much slower pace. So, if you had any advice you wanted to give to a new member or someone who was thinking about checking us out, what would that be, Julie?

Julie: I would say that one of the great things about regional conferences is for those folks who are new to URMIA and want to check it out but they may not be able to spend several days away from the office, that a regional conference is much shorter than the annual conference, and it’s basically the equivalent of one day of programming with a night in the hotel, where the annual conference lasts for several days, and air travel is often required, but because these things are much more local, a lot of people can drive to these conferences, it’s often an option for some of these attendees. Also, the registration is lower. The cost of this kind of conference is lower than the annual conference, so this is a great way to get your feet wet, to come in and see what you think about URMIA, and you know because the fee is lower, you’re not having to pay out as much to go to it. And I would also say, if you’re new and you’re an introvert, I understand that sometimes going to these large conferences can be overwhelming, and this is a great way to come into a smaller group, to get to know a few people, and then decide if you like URMIA and if it’s something that you want to continue to pursue, and once you get your feet wet with the regional conferences, I feel sure that you’ll want to attend the annual conferences because it’s the regional conferences just at a much larger level with much more information.

Jenny: Yeah, and one thing that we do try to do at most of the regional conferences is have some kind of organized round table discussions. I know last year in Richmond we did it kind of in a, we did it in a slightly different format, but I know the topics were like enterprise risk management, and Keisha Trim from the University of Richmond talked about scooters, and those kind of, you know, informal discussions you have with your peers and then the, our affiliate members, you know the groups that help support higher education risk management, they’re invaluable. So, that kind of networking and in-person face time you get at a regional conference is definitely worth a look. So, I would encourage everybody to check out our regional webpages on the website and consider attending a regional this year. Definitely mark your calendars for the annual conference later this year too. We’ll definitely be promoting that a great deal coming up soon. So, Julie, thank you so so much for being my guest today on the podcast series, and Julie was fundamental in making the podcast series a reality, so thank you, Julie, for being on the URMIA board and making this happen for us. So, that will be a wrap on this addition of URMIAmatters, and thanks again Julie Groves for being my guest!

Julie: Happy to be here! Thank you so much, Jenny.