HIGHL IGHTS A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 5 1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CORNER Growing Forward As I look out of my office window at the Eisenman Garden, I see a father, his teenage daughter, and two younger sons, exploring the beauty of this incredible place. The daughter is skipping around the circular pathway, snapping pictures of plants with her phone; and on the other side of the garden, the dad is talking with the boys, pointing to various minerals that line the border. I’ve witnessed a variation on this scene repeatedly throughout this first year in my role as Executive Director, and it always brings me such joy to see our visitors shape their visit to the Dome. I started as a visitor to the Dome myself this past January, and with 10 months under my belt, I’ve been able to craft my perspective of moving forward. I couldn’t have gained this understanding without the tremendous support of our officers and board, our affiliate societies, and the many past presidents and council leaders who have shared their abundant knowledge with me. Additionally, our staff dedicated countless hours to helping me learn about our membership and our products and services. What I see is an organization that is emerging from instability caused by the pandemic, with tolls on our workforce and on our revenues, and by staff leadership transitions. Throughout these tumultuous changes, the volunteer leadership and staff have remained resilient, persistent, and committed. I admire all of you. We will need to leverage our organizational resilience as we move into 2023, because revenue pressures will continue to be part of our new equation, many of them caused by this era of deep uncertainty. Will we formally move into a recession? Will face-to-face meetings re-establish themselves as the preferred way that business relationships are made? Will the new wave of COVID that is emerging in Europe cause more health concerns in the new year? How will the stock market and interest rates react? While we don’t know the answers to those questions today, I am a firm believer that the best thing we can do is to adopt a growth mindset. My perspective is that we will best meet the needs of the materials information community through organizational growth, which can stem from new products, improved products, or the elimination of non-value added activities. I am introducing this change in approach to our staff, challenging them to zero in on three to five critical success factors that will ensure that we deliver the highest value to our members and customers, and ultimately, grow ourselves into a financially sustainable organization. Let’s do fewer things better, with more use to our community, and grow these services to scale. I look forward to keeping you apprised of our progress as we move into 2023. In the meantime, happy holiday wishes to all! Sandy Robert, CAE Executive Director, ASM International sandy.robert@asminternational.org FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK Recognizing Our Uniqueness I am honored to be the 103rd president of ASM International. I joined ASM in 1977, just after starting as an assistant professor of MS&E at Lehigh University. Over the intervening decades, ASM has helped me at all stages of my professional career, and it is now time for me to give back to the Society that has served me so well. ASM is unique among materials professional societies in its emphasis on industry (nearly 70%of our membership). ASM is also unique among materials societies in its commitment to be the most trusted source of materials data. I got my exercise as a young professor hauling copies of the Metals Handbook around classrooms and laboratories at Lehigh. Soon, all that professors and students will need to do is log into our Data Ecosystem on their phones. ASM is unique in its layered structure of affiliate societies and chapters spread across North America and India. The volunteers from these affiliate societies and chapters constitute a body of expertise that has allowed us to continue to provide value despite the challenges of the last several years. We must continue to support them. I am pleased to report that we have survived the challenges of COVID and are managing the setback in the stock market and inflation. Under Sandy Robert’s leadership and her extraordinary team at the Dome, we continue to grow our membership (now 17,000) and we are gearing up for a return to full in-person meetings along with remote access where it makes sense. Due to the hard work and foresight of the presidents before me, we are privileged to have ample cash reserves, which will be used to invest in our strategic plan to provide resources to all our members, chapters, and affiliate societies. Our strong fiscal position will also allow us to implement the strategic plan that was approved by the board of trustees at our recent meeting during IMAT in New Orleans and which I will report on in a future column. Robert Williams FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK
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