A message from your FEI Portland President

I am thrilled to be writing my first President’s message for FEI Portland.  Before jumping into sharing some goals for the upcoming year, I wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to Dileep Kulkarni for his leadership over the past year. Despite Covid challenges, we are entering the new year strong with a healthy financial position, over 150 members and a full roster of partners.  Thanks Dileep and I look forward to your ongoing counsel as we move through the next year!
 
Looking forward, we really have 3 major areas of focus: Growing Membership, Delivering Compelling Programming and Providing Value for our Partners.
 
I am excited Jerome Kline has rejoined our Board and has taken over our Membership Committee.  Building on the work Cathy Kemnitz did last year, we are excited to attract new members, recapture members that we lost during Covid, and expand our base of Corporate members here in Portland.  
 
To that end, we have engaged Frontier Marketing to assist us in building out lead generation activities and expand our brand in the local market through the creation of various additional social channels.  Frontier Marketing has assisted other FEI Chapters (Detroit and Chicago) with their marketing efforts with good success and we are excited about what they are already doing for us.  You can stay up to date on FEI Portland events and announcements by following us on your favorite social media channels as outlined below.  Please like and share our content to help spread the word and grow our local presence:
•    LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/79692378/ 
•    Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/feiportlandchapter/ 
•    Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/feiportland/ 
•    Twitter - https://twitter.com/FeiPortland 
As we share pictures of our events on our social channels, prospective members can get a sense of the energy in each of our dinner meetings and the scale of our networking sessions. You can also help by bringing guests to our events and introducing your colleagues and financial network to FEI.  There is nothing like a personal touch from an existing member to get someone's attention.
 
Cathy Kemnitz is focused on leading our Programming Committee this year and Cari Thomas is continuing to lead our Social Committee.  The two of them will combine to deliver both professional content for our regular dinner meetings and fun social events throughout the year as we continue to “Work Hard, Play Hard".  Cathy is busy filling up our fall programming line-up and we will have a great set of events starting in September.  We are striving to get back on a regular "third Thursday of the month" programming schedule for our events.  In addition, Cathy is working on a membership survey we expect to launch later this month to get your input on what might improve the value of your membership.   On the Social front, Cari did a tremendous job with our annual Golf Tournament in June with a full field of golfers, tremendous partners and perfect weather. Cari has also organized our summer social line up for August 18 at Top Golf in Hillsboro.  Hope you can join us.  Remember that you can bring spouses, partners and significant others to this event.  You can REGISTER HERE.  We expect to continue to do periodic informal meet-ups throughout the year and our Winter Social in February.  
 
Brad Blickle remains our Partner Program leader again this year.  We truly are blessed with a wonderful set of partners that help us in all aspects of running FEI Portland.  We appreciate their support and could not be successful without them.  All our partners from this past year are continuing with us for another year which is tremendous.  Big shout out to Wells Fargo, K&L Gates, Robert Half, EY, Parker, Smith and Feek, JLL, Chase Bank, Bank of America, Perkins & Co., Woodruff Sawyer, Moss Adams, CBRE, Pavelcomm, and Geffen Mesher for their ongoing support. We also are welcoming 3 new partners to the fold this coming year.  Xenium HR, a human resources consulting, training and payroll services company and Aldrich Advisors, an accounting, wealth management and consulting firm have joined as partners effective July 1.  Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt, a law firm, will be joining as a partner effective January 1, 2023.  As members, please build relationships with these partners as they can be invaluable to you in your business either today or at some point in the future.
 
I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer and hope to see you at an upcoming event!  If you have any suggestions, ideas or want to get more involved with FEI Portland, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or any of our board members.  Our Committee leaders would love to have your help in making FEI Portland a great organization for our members and partners. 
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Roger Rowe 
FEI Portland President 
[email protected]