Iām honored to accept my second term as HBA president and just as I said last year, Iām grateful to all of our past presidents for their service and leadership. They have really paved the way. Having another year to see through many of the projects we have been working on will be my great privilege. Iām excited for 2020!
Weāve been working on this for a couple years now, but we are continuing to look for ways to expand our influence and involvement at the state and even national level. The goal continues to be āHow can we make our HBA better in the futureā with a strong focus on what is best for
OUR
chapter, and not just following in the footsteps of what the state or national level says.
Workforce development is a concern for almost everyone in the building industry, and last year we announced the formation of our own 501c3 foundation: Home Builders Association of the Grand Traverse Area Foundation. This foundation has helped us to establish a focus on education and growing both the quantity and quality of our workforce. Special thanks to Scott Duensing for all his hard work on this project. This year we awarded
over $11,000
in scholarships to the future of our industry. I have a past recipient on my staff, and she is thriving, so I can only imagine the impact these scholarships are having in the greater Grand Traverse Area.
Clearly, we know that engaging our members by our many offerings and volunteer leadership opportunities is critical for our sustainable growth. My biggest job in my second term is to find ways to inspire our members to WANT to give their time to our cause and recruit future leaders to our organization. Our programs must not only be current and relevant, they have to be accessible and provide the volunteer with a great return of value not only to themselves, but to their employers as well.
With this said, we are once again going to be looking for new leadership roles in our existing committees and boards. One initiative that that we started this year was our āEmerging Leadersā program. I had an amazing experience when I was invited to join such a program from the distinguished board of Cherryland Electric, and found it so inspiring that I brought that idea to the HBA. I think our program went well, with many of our attendees giving us wonderful feedback and we now have 3 of them going our board. Is anybody here interested in learning more about what it takes to be board member or chair a committee? Do you know of someone that may be a good candidate? Please send them our way. We feel very strongly that the HBA will benefit greatly with a continuous influx of young leaders with fresh ideas.
I am very excited about 2020 and am grateful for the opportunity to serve the HBA for another year. Iām honored that my fellow board members have trusted me with another year of this great responsibility.
Cheers to our 50th year.
Dean Adams, Bay Area Contracting
HBA President
