Dear Engaged New Orleanians,

I'd first like to wish all of you Happy Holidays as we all wrap up 2011. There's been a lot going on this past year, and EngageNOLA has been no stranger to it. We kicked off the year with a modification of our Meet the Candidate series, called Meet the Public Official, and even had a rebirthed Neutral Ground preparing summary handouts of the officials to supplement those events. We also hosted a Hurricane Preparedness Happy Hour in the summer, had a Voter Registration Party, and kicked off the election season with Meet the Lt. Governor candidates. On top of those public events, we've also been working hard behind the scenes to make our organization even better. During the summer, we had a mini-retreat to help us clarify the direction EngageNOLA is going. We discussed what we think the organization could be like in the next 3 to 5 years and set about putting mechanisms into motion that would help us get there.

One of the important things we settled on was the need to bring in new ideas and diversity to help keep this ship moving in a positive direction. So in November we elected our new board of directors for 2012, and in the beginning of December, the board chose who it wanted to be on its Executive Committee for the year.

So congratulations to our New Board of Directors and to the Executive Committee members!  Thanks to these people, 2012 is going to be a great year for EngageNOLA!  We have 18 directors, including nine new members to the board, and four of them are on the Executive Committee.

          Executive Committee:
               Chair: Fred Neal, Jr.
               Co-Chair: Carolina Hernandez
               Director of Communications: John Templeton
               Director of Development: Spenser Swaszyk
               Director of Membership: Wil Coleman
               Director of Projects: James A. Lancaster
               Secretary: Melissa Bennett
               Treasurer: Dan Jatres

          At-Large Board Members:
               Andrew Tuozzolo
               Buddy Boe
               Eban Walters
               Jameeta Youngblood
               Jules Goins
               Sonji White
               Todd Ragusa
          Partner Representatives:
               Puentes: Carolina Hernandez
               ULYP: Jonathan Sumter
               VAYLA: Minh Nguyen
               YLC: Richard Pavlick

While I am no longer on the Executive Committee or the board, I'm still going to be very involved, because EngageNOLA is an important asset to our community, and it needs all the helping hands it can get. So if you'd like to volunteer, as well, and get involved, there are several committees that are going to need you. In fact, if you want to start up a new project, just shoot us a message and we'll see if your idea lines up with our philosophy of non-biased engagement.

2012 is going to be a big year for all of us. We kick off the spring with local elections, and end it with the big presidential/federal election in the fall. So stay on the lookout for our programs, and come help if you'd like to see more of them. Or if you'd like to help and don't have time, but you do have a few pennies, we are accepting donations to help us continue to provide quality programs for the community. And your donations don't go to pay anyone's salaries, everyone listed above is a volunteer, so you can take heart that your donations are going to directly fund our events and operating costs.

Excited for 2012! And I'll see you at the polls!
           - Michael Grodsky