URMIA's 2025 Annual Business Meeting

In this special episode of URMIA Matters, all URMIA members are invited to listen in and hear the latest updates from the URMIA Executive Committee. Join us for a streamlined business meeting that will include a briefing on the Association by the president, a financial report by the treasurer, and other board officer updates. You will also hear about what the URMIA Office has been working on and what’s next for the URMIA community. Tune in to hear all the updates from the URMIA Board of Directors and what they are looking forward to in URMIA’s near future! 

Show Notes 

• URMIA Specialty Communities Sign-Up 
• URMIA Board Nominations and Elections 
• URMIA Board of Directors 
• About URMIA - Strategic Pillars 
• URMIAmentors 
• URMIAacademy 
• URMIA Matters Podcast - Meet URMIA's Newest Staff 
• URMIA Staff 
• URMIA - GRAC 
• URMIA's updated Risk Inventory 
• URMIA's 56th Annual Conference in Las Vegas (October 12-16) 

Guests  

Sandy Mitchell, Director, Office of Insurance - Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Miguel Delgado, Associate Vice President and Chief Risk Officer - Carnegie Mellon University 

Flo Hoskinson, Risk Manager - Oregon Health & Science University 

Craig McAllister, Assistant Vice President, Risk Management - University of Miami 

Jim Mulholland, Director of Compensation and Risk Management - Grinnell College 

Keesha Trim, Sr. Director, Risk Management & Insurance - University of Richmond 

Guest Host 

Michelle Smith, Executive Director - URMIA

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Transcript

Jenny Whittington: Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to URMIA Matters, a podcast about higher education, risk management, and insurance. Let's get to it. 

Michelle Smith: Hello. It's good to see some friendly faces on the screen. Good afternoon, everyone. Morning, afternoon. Depending on where you are. It's a pleasure to have you all. We have about 80 folks registered for the business meeting today, and it is my pleasure to get us kicked off with some housekeeping notes and just a reminder on how to use Zoom, and we are happy to have all of you here. If you could rename yourself and add your organization name, that would be fantastic. That way, when questions come in, we can identify them where they're coming from. And on that note, we do invite you to submit questions in the chat. If we can answer them there, that's great. If not, we'll hold them till the end and answer those questions as they come up. So, it is my pleasure to turn things over to Sandy Mitchell, president of the URMIA Board of Directors, and we'll get today's meeting started. 

Sandy Mitchell: Hi, welcome to URMIA's 2025 business meeting. For those who don't know me, I'm Sandy Mitchell. I'm the current president of URMIA for the next 22 days. Not that I'm counting. In my day job, I serve as the director for the office of insurance at MIT. This annual meeting is a requirement of our bylaws, which tell us at the annual meeting of members, the president and the treasurer, or our designees, shall report on the activities and financial condition of the corporation. So, in short, that's why we're here. We promise to make this meeting fast and fun. So, on behalf of the entire executive committee, the board of directors, and staff, thank you for joining us today. It's good to see you all. Please stick around for the drawing of prices along the way. Before we get started, I wanna provide a brief history of the meeting and an explanation for many years. This was in-person meeting that took place at the annual conference, the largest gathering of our membership. Once the pandemic interrupted our plans, we began convening the meeting online, reaching more members and ever, and making the audio available on URMIA Matters podcast and the full recording in the URMIA library. 

So, let's begin. First and foremost, URMIA the corporation is in good order, and we're just gonna discuss some of the highlights as we go along. As of the end of August, URMIA had 3,109 individual members, and we're gonna break it down with details 'cause we're all about details here at URMIA. Of those individual members, 2422 are institutional members. 587 are affiliate members, 100 student and retiree members. We represent 878 campuses around the world. We have 1100, 611 institutional members and 146 affiliate company members. So where do all these member institutions come from? Institutions outside of Canada, sorry, outside of the US and Canada is 18. That's about 3%. Institutions with total enrollment less than 4,000 students is 211. And that's 35% of our membership. The highest category of our membership. Institutions with enrollment between 4,000 and 14,000 students are 182, which is 30%. Enrollment between 14,000 and above, is 132 for 21.5%, and institutional system members are 75 at 12%. 

So, the URMIA network of our online communities is the space for all of our members to connect online, year-round, and with special gatherings designed specifically for these groups, whether the communities are risk management, content based, or are identity based. Okay, so there we go. Our communities have increased in size and in number over the last year for personalized connections. Please log in and join one of these if you have not already. As you can see, the number of members represented in each of these groups is not insignificant. I believe Rachel has put a link in the chat, so you could connect to that now if you would like.  

Okay. In the area of workforce development, virtual presentations have topped 70 programs with 2,814 attendees participating live. Not to mention the view of all of the recordings. This included starting off the year with our Best of series, highly rated sessions from our annual conference. It was followed by numerous educational webinars presented by thought leaders among our members and friends of URMIA, our community, conversations with the Professionals of Color, our YoPros, Compliance and ERM professionals facilitated water cooler chats, gatherings by school size, and our community conversations on hot topics. Phew. That is a lot of stuff going on in our communities here. Many of our virtual offerings are recorded and can be found in our library. 

As part of the outreach across our campuses, we have also opened several of our online offerings to non-member, hold on a second, non-member individuals, so that our member risk managers can invite colleagues to sit in on the webinars relevant to their work. 43 people have taken advantage of this offer so far, and we hope to see that grow year over year. We are up to 126 episodes with over 17,500 downloads of URMIA Matters podcast, hosted by Julie Groves, with guests talking about URMIA Association news, as well as topics from across risk management and insurance. We are now in season six, so if you haven't checked those out yet, you really should. Our regional conferences were co-hosted with partners, and this year we had almost 264 total attendees. All in all, it's been an amazing year for programming. 

Additionally, we continue expanding our reach on campus by deepening relationships with other associations and creating new partnerships with those who provide services to risk managers in their day-to-day work. So how do we get this all done? URMIA's work is guided by the officers or executive committee, and you see them here on the screen. You've got Miguel, Craig, Flo, Jim, and Keesha. I'm not gonna read full names and where they're from. The group has met monthly reviewing URMIA committees, the financials, and reviewing operations. They will provide updates during today's meeting. Your board of directors elected by your organization's voting member has met quarterly and guides the strategic direction of the organization. The nominations for this leadership team come from you, the membership, and are outlined in the Leadership Development Committee website. We will talk about the outcome of this year's elections in a little bit, and I believe Rachel has put in a link with information relating to that. 

You too can be part of all of this. As for the first item of official business, we'd like to announce the next few board meetings, which are open to all of our membership.  We have two meetings that will take place in Las Vegas. The first is on Sunday, October 12th, which will be my last board meeting to preside over, and then another one as the conference closes on Thursday, October 16th, which newly sworn in President Miguel Delgado will kick off the meeting to get his term started. Our 2026 Spring boarding meeting will be held in conjunction with next year's programming meeting and sponsor flying coming up in February. The past few years we've alternated the Spring board meeting, so it's paired with a regional conference one year and programming planning the next. We'd like to announce the board meetings here at the annual business meeting as an invitation to the membership to get more involved. As a reminder, our board meetings are open to all members. This is my invitation to you to join us and see how the URMIA board is works, and it's a great time to get involved. If you are interested in attending any of the meetings in Las Vegas, please let Michelle Smith, URMIA's Executive Director, know, so that we can have all the logistics covered  for you. 

So, we're very much looking forward to seeing many of you next month. I think Jenny said it earlier, 16 days, and we'll be in Las Vegas through October 12th through the 16th. And don't worry, you can still register. While the hotel block is full, there's still plenty of other hotels in the area and all of that can be checked out on our website. And for those that are joining us virtually, we can't wait to see you as well. Looking ahead, I want to share that our 57th annual conference will take place October 10th through the 14th, 2026 in Philadelphia. It is also the 250th anniversary for Philadelphia that year. So, there'll be lots of things going on in the city. 

At the end of this meeting, you'll hear from Juan Azcarate from Dallas College and the two, 2025 conference chair about the Las Vegas conference. And then either Ben Evans with the University of Pennsylvania and Kim Nimmo from Lehigh University, the co-chairs for 2026 conference, will share information about the Philadelphia conference. Our Spring 2026 gatherings will happen with learning at newly named URMIA Institutes, which will be in various parts of the country where our members are concentrated. We are continuing the successful model of co-locating with our colleagues from across campuses and one of the upcoming programs, supporting the University of Texas Risk Management Symposium program in April. We will also be hosting two programs on campuses in Baltimore and Salt Lake City. Each of these strategies allow URMIA to reduce overall program costs. A call for volunteers to work on those programs will be live shortly if it isn't already. 2026 is going to be another awesome year of URMIA programs. 

Well, it's hard to believe that my year of the URMIA presidency is coming to an end. I, I'm a little sad. I feel fortunate and honored to have had the opportunity to represent URMIA at various events, and I want to thank this group of folks pictured here for the work they've done as volunteer leaders of the association. This includes your executive committee and your board of directors. At the beginning of my term on stage in New Orleans, I shared with those in attendance that the year ahead would be a year of support for our staff and the new executive director to implement back office changes and improvements with a focus on growing the membership, not just in terms of individual members, but an increase in the number of member organizations as well. Much like our work at home institutions or companies, continuous improvement serves as well with consistent review to determine relevance. Improve efficiency and advance our respective organizations. Having this strong base of operations allows all other areas to blossom. The support that higher education risk managers have at their backs is stronger than ever. 

So, the URMIA Board has continued to do the important work of our association strategically and with fiduciary responsibilities in mind. We have five strategic pillars, and you'll note as we discuss each one, they all go with U-R-M-I-A, URMIA. And the pillars focus on strengthening the association in support of the members by connecting each other and approving resources. Each goal has a team assigned to accomplish various objectives. Each team was comprised of an executive committee member, two directors of the board, staff, and other stakeholders. You can find a summary of these pillars online and Rachel, once again, has put the link out there for you, and I'm happy to share that good progress is being made on all of them. 

Each year we update the strategic plan for the following year. This year we did a few things that I'm spec, excuse me, especially proud of, so please bear with me as I share a few highlights from each of these groups. Objectives for Strategic Pillar U, utilizing resources for collaboration. The group of volunteers led by Matt Tuttle and Rachel Pluviose has been hitting it outta the park all year. Some of the accomplishments include focus groups hosted in April were done to gather feedback from a cross section of members. Information received was helpful and has been summarized for future consideration. They assisted in connecting URMIA members with similar interests by hosting round table discussions by school size or topic. Additional connecting points are being explored. 

And the URMIA Mentors program is wrapping up its first year by sending out an evaluation to the program participants. Mentors and mentees are providing information for improvements in 2026, per request at the midyear evaluation. A list of potential topic mentors can utilize after the initial meetings is being created to help provide ideas for continued discussion in meetings. I've been a part of this, and it's been wonderful. I, I feel like I've met several new friends not just mentees. 

So Strategic Pillar R, cultivate Roles for risk managers. This includes helping our members with their role on campus. This group is co-led by Juan Azcarate, Flo Hoskinson, and Pam Kerney, and they had the incredible support by other volunteers and staff members. They focused on the volunteer process, including more transparency in the open positions, defined job descriptions, and creating vice chair roles for all committees to ensure stability in transitions. Additionally, groundwork is being laid for a salary survey in 2026. In order to engage institutional leadership, the team is working on several projects to evaluate the role of risk manager in every corner of the campus with public relation efforts, collaboration, and access to partners who offer certifications and credentialing. Needless to say, they've already started a robust list of things they want to accomplish in 2026. 

Strategic Pillar M, enhance Member skills, has been shepherded by Susie Johnson and Amanda Franklin, and aim to elevate the skills of URMIA members. They get off to a strong start with interaction with first time attendees at the Spring regional conferences to share information and provide a warm welcome for them. Additionally, they have created short videos and made URMIA network posts about URMIA resource, including Tag, You're It post. I find those so much fun. I have to be honest with you on that. The team has also worked side by side with the education and events team, who have thus far hosted 70 virtual events for members and guests, and using new technology has successfully launched the first course in the URMIAacademy, Essentials of Higher Education Risk Management. This was a gigantic lift and in the queue for several years, so we are so proud to provide this new offering to our members. 

Strategic Pillar I, optimizing Infrastructure. This referred to improving our infrastructure in technology, volunteer structure, and finances. Part of this work stemmed from a technology audit in 2022, which kicked off a myriad of technology improvements, the last of which was completed in 2024. After the work of the membership dues committee completed their work and this year has been spent fine tuning the systems to give good reporting on the new data available. Our largest user experience improvements was the transition of our website to a new platform. URMIA has  successfully migrated its website to an updated platform designed to enhance usability and improve member engagement. Key improvements included a more intuitive user-friendly experience for members, streamline navigation for quicker access to resources and tools. A redesigned community layout to make it easier for members to connect and share resources. An updated URMIA library, with simplified navigation of resource entries. And enhanced member profiles with networks allowing members to connect with others who share similar backgrounds and interests. I have to say, I'm, I'm ad-libbing here, but a lot of this work was done by the staff, and as you saw, some of it was started four years ago. So, kudos to all of you and all the hard work that went into this. It, it's, it's terrific. 

This year we also welcome two new staff members, Carrie and Bowen, to support operations and programs. We were able to learn more about all the newest URMIA staff in a podcast episode, and there was a link to that podcast. Rachel, you are so on top of it here. We have been working with the finance committee to review policies and proving on what has already been in place and propose the need for separate audit committee to continue this work. Finally, this pillar advanced a new relationship with financial advisors and conducted a risk tolerance survey with the board and finance committee, resulting in a transition of the URMIA investments to a more balanced portfolio with strongly rated investments and fewer fees. Thank you to Nakeschi Watkins and Elliot Young for support on this pillar. 

And finally, Pillar A, expand Alliances. This was led by Tristan Tafolla and Frank Cella. The Pillar is focused on ensuring stability for URMIA's partnerships. Building on the 27 collaborations we had in 2024, this group went deeper and broader across campus. The government relations committee was reestablished. The regulatory and legislative actions affecting higher ed and resources were provided both online and in community conversations. So, there you are with the URMIA pillars. And now I'm done for a little bit. So, I'm gonna turn this over to Flo for the secretary's report.  

Flo Hoskinson: Hi, there. Thank you, Sandy, for that comprehensive overview of our achievements under your leadership. It's truly remarkable to see the growth and positive impact URMIA has experienced during your presidency. Your dedication to expanding our URMIA reach and fostering engagement among our members has been inspiring. So, thank you, Sandy. Our 2024 annual business meeting minutes. From just before our annual conference in New Orleans were approved by the Board of Directors, a link to the minutes is published on our website. In fact, all of our meeting minutes are filed in the URMIA governance folder in the URMIA library that members can access 24/7. If anyone has comments about the minutes, please reach out to me or any board member. 

I also wanted to make sure you were aware that URMIA launched and revamped version of the URMIA Risk Inventory just last month. So, one of the most used URMIA tools, the risk inventory was developed by seasoned risk managers in higher education to aid those new in the profession of higher education risk management. This guide explains foundational concepts and curates powerful content, providing guiding light to those responsible for managing risk at institutions of higher education. I encourage you all to check it out via the link. The 2025 update includes 31 risk, new risk factors, and a new category of resources on artificial intelligence, including 14 risk areas. So, now I'd like to turn it over to Keesha Trim for our parliamentarian.  

Keesha Trim: Thanks, Flo. Hello everyone. I'm Keesha Trim, the board parliamentarian. Last year, we made several important bylaw updates. We refined leadership terms com, clarified policies, and updated language throughout the document. This year we put these changes into practice and tested their effectiveness. I'm pleased to share that they continue to serve us well and provide a strong foundation to guide our organization. In addition, last fall, our president, president-elect, and executive director participated in specialized board leadership training. Building on that, the full board received additional training at the April board meeting that focused on receiving reports and strengthening our intake processes. These efforts directly support our code of conduct policy and its implementation and reinforce our commitment to effective governance. 

I also want to note that all our governing documents are now current and available on the new and improved URMIA website pictured here, which is part of the Pillar I of, part of Pillar I of our strategic plan, working to strengthen our operations and member experience with technology. Finally, I am looking forward to seeing so many of you and connecting with you at the conference later this year in Las Vegas Now I have the fun task of giving out the first prize. So, Teresa, please explain how we are going to do this.  

Teresa Ransdell: Thanks, Keesha. We have 38 URMIA members in attendance today who are eligible for the prizes. So, Keesha, if you will give me a number between one and 38. We'll determine who gets our first prize, which is an URMIA swag bag.  

Keesha Trim: Okay, I'm thinking of a good number. Let's go with 31.  

Teresa Ransdell: 31 is Judy Ricks. Judy, I'll be in touch on how to get you your URMIA swag bag.  

Keesha Trim: Congratulations, Judy. So, now that ends my parliamentarian report. Let me now introduce Jim Mulholland to give our treasurer's report.  

Jim Mulholland: Thank you, Keesha. Good afternoon all. I'm Jim Mulholland URMIA's Treasurer. Please see the 2023 and 2024 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 informing the membership that we have a slight increase for dues in 2026 consistent with last year's CPI increase. There's a $5 per individual increase in membership dues or 2.6%. We thank you all for your continued support. At the end of 2024, the following position by the association was in place for the statement of financial position balance sheet. We intentionally reduced our cash position in Old National Bank during the 2024 fiscal year. We closed the year with $163,800 in our bank account, which was 266, 500 less than the same time at year end, 2023. We add 152,000 in our Schwab money market account. All our accounts are interest, are earning interest, and fully FDIC insured, other cash equivalents are in certificates of deposit. We had 250,000 in Schwab in BE Bank earning 4.05%. We had 250,000 through LPL invested in Morgan Stanley at a 5.15%. 

A CD was purchased through Raymond James with JP Morgan, 240,000, with a maturity date of 7/16/2025, but was callable on 1/16/2025 at a rate of 5.3%. Our long-term investments with Raymond James total $3.321 million, as compared to 2.678 million at the end of 2023. Our total assets increased by $380,000 over the same period last year with total assets currently at $4.511 million. We have unearned dues revenue of $690,000 at the end of the year. Our total equity grew by 301,000 from 2023 to 2024. Statement of activities is the income statement. As mentioned above, at year we had unearned dues revenue of $690,000, currently. Dues revenue for 2024, closed at $804,000, which exceeded our budget by $55,000. 

Total revenue from the national conference closed at 1.366 million compared to expenses of 1.052 million. Our regional conferences received 99,000 from registrations and sponsorships. Our expenses closed at $67,000. Budget versus actuals. Our revenue is at 127.27% of budget, or 605,000 more than budgeted. About half 291,000 is due to investment returns, and the remainder 314,000 comes from the national conference. Our expenses are at 109.83% of budget, or $225,000 more than budgeted. The additional expense comes at the cost of a successful national conference. Financially, it has been a very successful year. I now have the pleasure of introducing Craig McAllister to give the leadership development report.  

Craig McAllister: Thanks, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Craig McAllister and I'm here in my capacity as the Leadership Development Committee chair, which is always the role of the immediate past president of URMIA. This is part of our governance and it's a great way to transition for the URMIA presidency to being a little less involved as the past president, and it's a very important duty as the committee I work with is finding the future leaders of URMIA. 

First, I'd like to thank the members of the committee who had worked together to find such a wonderful slate of candidates. I would like to extend our thanks to all the colleagues who answered the call and ran in the URMIA election. Thank you to all who voted. We had a great turnout. We had a terrific slate of candidates. And the future of URMIA is in good hands. Please join us and congratulating the following President-elect Susie Johnson from Iowa State University. Board of directors for three year terms, Emily Hochstatter from Northern Illinois University, Samantha McClelland from George Mason University, Christine Packard from University of Massachusetts, president's office, and Colorado Robertson from LSU, excuse me, Louisiana State University. Additionally, Tristan Tafolla has been appointed as secretary and will be joining the executive committee. 

Congratulations to all and our sincere thanks and appreciation to all the members of our committee, our community, who continue to volunteer their time to serve in many different capacities to make our association the best it can be. We do have several board members who are completing their assigned service to the association, and we will be honoring departing board members in person in Las Vegas. I'd like to give a special thanks to Flo Hoskinson of Oregon Health and Sciences University, who has served as an officer in the secretary role. Thank you, Flo. And Juan Azcarate with Dallas College. Pamela Kerney of the University of Tennessee System. And Tristan Tafolla with Columbia University, who all served as directors on the board in '24 to '25. Additionally, Susie Johnson completes her term as a board member and assumes her role as president elect. Please join me in. Thank each of them. Now I get the pleasure of giving a member the second prize. Teresa, help me out here.  

Teresa Ransdell: Same rules apply Craig, a number between one and 38, and this time it's for a $50 Amazon gift card. 

Craig McAllister: 21.  

Teresa Ransdell: 21 is Laverne Miles of the University of Maryland College Park. Congratulations Laverne. 

Craig McAllister: Thanks, Teresa. And I'm now turning it over to Miguel.  

Miguel Delgado: Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Miguel Delgado, associate Vice President, and Chief Risk Officer at Carnegie Mellon University. And the president elect to steal the line from Sandy for 22 more days, but who's counting? I'd like to give an additional thank you to our departing board members for the, for their service to the the association. I was a director on the board from 2021 through 2024. And have now been a member of the executive committee for almost a year now. The, for those of you that aren't aware of this, the exec committee meets once a month to ensure we have a good pulse on the work of the association. And basically, the president elect gets to review all contracts we enter into, and is in sort of training for the president's role. So, just wanna say good luck, Susie. But seriously, the governance process that URMIA's previous leaders have set up really works. I'm proud of all the work we've done as a team. The executive committee has oversight of the URMIA Home Office, in conjunction with Michelle Smith, our executive director. 

If you have not yet met our team, you should. As we have a few new faces this year. I believe that most of them are on the Zoom call with us today. And they will each wave or I don't like to just give people one option. You could throw up a peace sign if you'd rather do that, but they're gonna wave or throw up a peace sign when I introduce them. 

So, let's start with Executive Director, Michelle Smith. Senior Director of Membership and Marketing, Teresa Ransdell. Marketing Specialist, Adam Sieracki. Sorry if I didn't get your last name right, Adam, I need to double check with you on that. Information Technology man, Manager, Bowen Murphy. Senior Director, Education and Events, Jack Voorhees. Learning Specialist, Rachel Kuper. Program Specialist, Carrie Burnett. And then our part-time risk management experts, Education Manager, Sue Liden, and Resource Manager Ruth Rauluk. And still with us thankfully, is Executive Director Emeritus, Jenny Whittington, serving part-time on special projects. The office also has a wonderful student worker, Audrey Oxley, from Indiana University to help support the mission of URMIA. For those of you active on social media, you've seen some of Audrey's work. And supporting our accounting functions is Heidi Anderson. The staff is always there to answer any questions you have, if you want to know more about what goes on as flow informed you. Our monthly meeting minutes are filed in the URMIA govern, governance folder in the URMIA Library. Now I'd like to introduce Juan Azcarate from Dallas College to tell us about our upcoming annual event in Las Vegas in just a few weeks. Juan, take it from here. 

Juan Azcarate: Thank you, Miguel. Thank you, Miguel. Hard to believe that it's only three weeks away. I mean, it's hard to, I mean, time has just flow by, but we're all really excited that URMIA is finally coming to Las Vegas. This is our first time in the city for the annual conference. So, it was our goal to bring together as many of us as possible for the usual high caliber educational sessions that we have, and the keynote addresses that we hear typically at URMIA. And so, we know that we're gonna have a really great networking experience when we're there. And so, we note that we always have a, the city's gonna have just a great impact on the, on the organization, and we just didn't realize it until we started actually registering folks, or people started getting registered for the conference. 

And so, I'm happy to report that right now we have, as of this morning, September 24th, we have 939 people reg, registered, of which 741 are full in-person attendees, 108 are virtual attendees, 24 are coming just for one day, and 49 are guests of our, our other attendees. So, we also, especially welcome our first time attendees and our international guests as well. Annual conference usually the committee does a great job of putting this together. And so it is, as you know, comprised of our peers who work very hard and there's a lot of behind the scenes work that sometimes people don't really understand and see. And they deserve a lot of credit for what you'll see in the next couple of weeks. 

Whether you're attending in person or virtual, I think you're really gonna find this inspiration in what we have planned for you. I encourage everyone who is attending to take advantage of the time that we've been together to learn, network, and advance our challenging profession. One last thing I want to point out is we do have a tip for our virtual attendees. So, make sure you block your calendar now and plan to put on your out of office message so you can dedicate this time to your development with as little distraction as possible. Thank you very much.  

Miguel Delgado: Thank you on and appreciate the the reminder. I, I needed that. And now over to my good friend Kim Nimmo over on the other side of the state here in Pennsylvania for a preview of the 2026 annual conference.  

Kim Nimmo: Thank you, Miguel, and Juan, for your update on Vegas. Not to steal any thunder from Juan in Las Vegas, but next year we're heading to another exciting city, Philadelphia. URMIA prepares for an unforgettable experience in the heart of this historic and vibrant city. Our theme will be "Safeguarding the Future: Lessons from the Past in the Heart of Philadelphia." And it's a tribute to the city's rich history and its relevance to modern higher education risk management. So, the committee working on this conference will be crafting a program that blends insightful workshops, topics like risk assessment, crisis management, and everything else involved in risk management with engaging networking and events and iconic, at iconic venues like Redding Terminal and the Franklin Institute and many more. The 57th Annual Conference will be a landmark event that truly honors the past while shaping the future of our field. Experienced dynamic speakers and unique events that showcase Philadelphia's cultural scene and academic excellence at URMIA '26, 2026. To do that though, we do need your help. 

So, the call for sessions, we'll launch right after the Las Vegas annual conference, and I encourage you to answer the call to submit abstracts to present in Philadelphia. Additionally, if you're attending Las Vegas, make sure you complete the event evaluation to tell us what you liked about the annual conference. And identify some opportunities that we can address in the future. Your feedback really does make a difference, and we want to hear from you. So, back to you, Miguel. 

Miguel Delgado: Thank you for that, Kim. Exciting stuff. Madam President Sandy, that concludes our report.  

Sandy Mitchell: So, thank you to all our presenters today. I hope you found the information presented useful and helpful to understand the work done on your behalf as our members to advance the discipline of risk management and higher education. Short, sweet, and with a little punch and a couple prizes along the way. I wanna take this time to thank you again for entrusting me as your president for URMIA. It has been my honor to serve you for the last year. We hope to see many of you in Las Vegas at the conference or online for the virtual sessions. If you haven't registered yet, there is still time. Thank you for being a member of URMIA and supporting Higher Education Risk Management. I will now adjourn the meeting. 

Michelle Smith: Thank you to everyone attending. We look forward to whatever you engage with next with URMIA. Have a great day. 

Narrator: You've been listening to URMIA Matters. You can find more information about URMIA at www.urmia.org. For more information about this episode, check out the show notes available to URMIA members in the URMIA Network library.