New Year’s Wishes for our Collaborative Community As 2018 draws to a close and we begin looking towards the coming year, I am excited to see what the coming year will bring. I have the distinct honor of serving the IACP Board of Directors as its President for another year, which will culminate in Chicago at the 2019 Forum. I can tell you all that we have big plans for our 20th Annual Forum, and we have an excited community in and around Chicago that is chomping at the bit to make the 20th Forum an event to remember. As a New Year’s wish for all of you, I wish that everyone would mark October 25 – 27, 2019, on their calendar, and that each of you will come and experience the Forum, which I believe is the most inspiring Collaborative event available anywhere. Whether you come to the Forum every year or this would be your first time, I can guarantee you will experience a global gathering of Collaborative Professionals unlike anything you have ever experienced. How, you may ask, can I make a guarantee like this relating to an event that is 10 months away? Simple, at the Forum I will have the great pleasure of handing the reins of the IACP Board of Directors over to our President-Elect, Francesca King, and that transition will mark the beginning of the term of our first President of the IACP who hails from outside of North America. The excitement of this coming transition is sure to invigorate our community outside of North America and to make them all want to experience this event first-hand. However, before we get to the end of my second term, we must focus on the beginning. Over the next month, we will be ramping up for the coming Board year. Committee assignments have been made, and I want to personally thank everyone who submitted an Expression of Interest in Board Service and to welcome you to your new roles on IACP committees. The past year has seen tremendous growth in our committee work, and the coming year promises to be even more remarkable. Steering and informing our work in the coming year and beyond will be a new strategic plan, which the Board will be working on in January. I believe this plan will represent a vision for the future of the IACP where being a Collaborative Professional will mean more than just being a professional capable of implementing and executing a roadmap to resolution in a Collaborative Divorce case. Collaborative Professionals will be seen as emissaries of peace in the atrocious conflict of family disputes, and the IACP will help to spread the word to other professionals and the families they serve that peace is available in the hearts of those in the Collaborative community. Exciting things are coming and the IACP will position itself to lead the charge in transforming the world of family dispute resolution. We will take measures to make the best Collaborative training and education more available to our members to help them continue their shift. The New Year dawns with a light that will shine in the hearts of every Collaborative Professional, and it is my New Year’s wish that those who have lapsed as members and those who have never been members will be drawn to the IACP for the value we bring and our membership numbers will grow. I wish that each of you would look out into your Collaborative community and encourage those who aren’t members to join us in our quest. If each of you brought one new member to the IACP, the doubling of our membership that would result would allow us to better provide benefits to all, and to continue in our quest to bring Collaborative Practice to every family in the world. The New Year is going to be beautiful and it is going to be a party. You are all invited and I want you to bring your friends with you. We have room for all of them and more, so bring them along because it is going to be one heck of a ride.
Sincerely,
Chris Farish
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