Joan Michaels Aguilar’s Year In Review

On a personal note, I was particularly thrilled to have a photo taken with Steve Gross wearing my own Life is Good shirt. I have been a long-time fan of the organization and the good work they do, and found his talk very inspiring, and dare I say I even teared up a couple of times. I was so glad they had an option to purchase their book on-site and look forward to reading it soon. This will be a book I cherish in my library. For those readers out there, Jeffrey Barnes also has an amazing book titled the Wisdom of Walt – Leadership Lessons from the Happiest Place on Earth. At each conference, I know I run into colleagues, and sometimes people have started new jobs or are contemplating whether they should make the leap. I think that is one of the take-aways, with many in our municipal finance field reaching retirement, have the confidence to move up in your organization or pursue that next step at another agency that can value your expertise. If you have read some of my columns in the CSMFO News throughout the year, I have encouraged involvement in CSMFO, whether it be volunteering to help out at your chapter meetings, becoming a committee member – CSMFO now has a student engagement committee led by Craig Boyer who is looking for members. This may mean talking about municipal finance at a local college/university to encourage the next generation to join this viable career opportunity. At the conference, I had the pleasure to speak to a student from Cal Poly Pomona, who was very excited to be attending and her enthusiasm was infectious. In conclusion, I will say that CSMFO has been a wonderful organization for me, I have met people that are now my friends and family. It helped me advance my career over the years and I am proud to have mentored others to get more involved. This past year, as I mentioned, the Board authorized the establishment of the Student Engagement Committee and an ad hoc group completed a comprehensive review of the by-laws which will be brought before members for a vote, thereby meeting some of our strategic plan goals. The road may have been bumpy some of the times, but as the quote goes “Falling down is an accident…staying down is a choice.”

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