Hello again WESTAF community: Thank you everyone for such an action-packed week — really productive and inspiring all-team, committee and trustee meetings. Thanks for the blocks of intense time, focus and feedback. It was a lot! There was so much information to cover in the agenda that in fine-tuning how we spend our time together in the future, we want to make sure that individual topics have more room for thoughtful discourse and the sharing of ideas. Special thanks to our team and trustee committee presenters for the preparation and delivery. This coming week, we’ll be saying farewell to Seyan…

Greetings WESTAF trustees and colleagues: Like me, maybe you’re feeling relieved — even optimistic and inspired — after an Inauguration Day that went by pretty smoothly last week given the circumstances we face as a nation. While I definitely gave myself the space to soak up what this transition and new chapter means for our fragile democracy (there may have been a January 20th, 12:01 PM mimosa involved) as you can see from this biweekly recap the work of WESTAF has not skipped a beat and indeed, seems to be ramping up across the organization. There’s much to be thankful…

Greetings WESTAF trustees and colleagues: Welcome to the first biweekly recap of 2021. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but it has already been a year that will be seared forever into our memories, and we’re not even halfway through January. At WESTAF, we’ve been forging ahead with our work, even as our government was under attack by domestic terrorists and rioters. For me, frankly, it has been hard not to just consume cable news and doom scroll on my device, even though that makes me feel worse, and there are other important things to do. But,…

Greetings WESTAF trustees: Happy to be checking in with you once again! This will be my last biweekly of 2020 (I’m going to skip over the one that would have come up right before the new year and give you a break!). The next biweekly should land in your inboxes around January 11. This week, we were also able to confirm our February meeting dates (February 3-4), which had been left as TBD before the pandemic while we determined whether we should do another DC advocacy trip or meet someplace in the west. Well, the pandemic proceeds apace (albeit with…