Washington State

Executive Assistants Group

Events

Last Updated:
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Web Designer—Mary Anderson

EAG Fall Conference October 27, 2011. Tumwater, WA.

Reinvest in Your Future

EAG sponsors annual fall training for state administrative assistants/employees. Committee work begins in spring. This is a great opportunity to hone event-planning best practices or to pick up new skills. EAG members are encouraged to assist with conference planning and attend.

 

The 2011 Fall Conference theme “reinvest in your future” could not have been timelier. While our conference was in session, Governor Gregoire released her options for a $2 billion dollar budget reduction. With small agencies and large agencies taking a 5% and 10% reduction respectively, many state employees are weighed down by uncertainty. With high unemployment, available positions are fierce with competition. It is important that all of us evaluate our transferrable skills, build our professional brand, and really focus on the future that we want for ourselves. The planning committee’s goals for the conference included renewing our commitment to the community and ourselves; refreshing our spirits after dealing with everything that has come at us the past few years; and most importantly, taking time and resources to reinvest in ourselves.

EAG provided two award-winning speakers for this year’s event. The workshop, presented by Pat Seigler, focused on how to focus on individual priorities and to work better in a team setting. The keynote, presented by Dr. Arun Raha, was engineered to provide a lot of information to attendees on what happened to get us to the current state of the economy and what the current conditions are for the U.S., Washington, and the Global economies.

Pat Seigler, Director of Employment Security Department’s Training Academy, opened the conference with his workshop on the 7 habits of highly successful people. Pat encouraged the audience to determine what’s important in their lives and to craft a personal mission statement that is easy to recall. He also encouraged that we ask ourselves what legacy we want to leave behind, what do we want to accomplish in this life? He interestedly pointed out that if you look back, things have changed a lot in 200 years. For 150 years there was more importance placed on a person’s character, their integrity and ethics. For the past 50 years, the emphasis has been on personality. We’ve become more of a “dress for success” society. This reaffirms how important it is to polish your brand.

Arun Raha, PhD, brought a lot of information to share with our audience. The concepts were sometimes difficult to understand, the message gloomy, but overall he provided valuable information to the audience. This balanced out the soft-skills portion of the conference. When our attendees watch the news or read the paper, they’ll have a better understanding of the headlines regarding the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. They also now have a better idea than most Washington citizens do on what Greece has to do with Washington’s economy!

To close up the conference, EAG member desiree Carson offered 5 steps to reinventing yourself:

1. Create a vision of your future.

2. Write about your reinvention. Write about how it will feel to be there. Keep your writing somewhere you will look at it occasionally.

3. Surround yourself with visual reminders of the life you’d like to create. If it’s a new job in a particular field, put objects or images from that field someplace where you’ll see it every day.

4. Now that you have a vision of your future, break it up into workable tasks. Make a list of everything you need to do and a schedule for when you’ll do it. Then do it and commit to keep doing it, one day at a time.

5. Every day, go back to that vision of you walking towards your future. Each time you find yourself slipping into old habits, like procrastinating on a task that might help you advance in your career, don’t bother wondering why you’re doing it or beating yourself up. Just ask yourself, “What can I do in this moment to keep moving forward?

EAG thanks our speakers, Pat and Arun, conference chairs, Xyzlinda Marshall and desiree Carson. A special thank you to Danice Ragland, Mary Anderson, Kami Madsen, Kathleen Turnbow and Betsy Hagen. EAG also thanks Pollution Liability Insurance Agency, GET the Guaranteed Education Tuition program, and Employment Security Department for their donations. EAG also thanks New Market Skills Center for hosting our event and providing the catering. Most importantly, EAG thanks all of those who attended the conference!

Day of Caring September 23, 2011. Lacey, WA.

Clutter Busters!!

For the past few years, the Executive Assistants Group has participated in the annual United Way’s Day of Caring and provided volunteer support to local non-profit agencies. It has been a very rewarding and satisfying experience for the EAG to be able to give back to the community.

We returned to the Book Barn of the South Sound Reading Foundation, somewhat skeptical that the work we did last year was preserved. We were happy to see that it maintained a lot of the effort we put into it, but the work is never done! Joining EAG was a non-profit group called Zonta. These fabulous women rolled up their sleeves and worked along side us. The mix of the two groups was great! After the event we received an email from Executive Director Jennifer Williamson Forster letting us know that we TRULY MADE A DIFFERENCE. The foundation distributes over 40,000 books a year to promote literacy and to create potential for all south sound kids.

EAG thanks Barb Cleveland for organizing the event. Also, volunteers Xyzlinda Marshall, Jessica Cleveland, Shannon Berquist, and desiree Carson. We would also like to thank Honorary member Mary Henley for initiating this volunteer opportunity over a decade ago.

Barb, who’s been volunteering since 2001 says, “I absolutely love volunteering for the Day of Caring. I really enjoy helping our community and the projects we (EAG) have done have been so rewarding. It’s great to see the end results of our labor. Plus we get to meet new people.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEBSITE CONTACTS

If you have questions, comments, or information you would like to see posted on this website, please email desiree Carson or Mary Anderson.

EAG Spring Conference May 20, 2011. Olympia, WA.

Renew, Re-invent and Re-invest

The sun was shining on the attendees of the 2011 EAG Spring Conference. Gerber daisies adorned the tables, along with water and power snacks. Conference Chair Robin Riley and her team members Jana Greer, Janet Culik, Pat Schmidlkofer, and Loy McColm were all there ready to welcome attendees as they entered.

Jana Greer officially took over the reigns as Chair and made quick work to make the attendees feel at ease and ready for a series of speakers that would help each of us find a way to renew, reinvent and reinvest in ourselves.

Cathy Callahan, Executive Director of the Public Employment Relations Commission inspired us with her life story and encouraged us to take time to dream. She celebrated those of us that are content with our life. She stressed that each of us should be independent, prepared to take care of ourselves, and encouraged us to embrace challenge.

Following Cathy’s inspirational story, Cindy Hadfield with Department of Personnel helped us recognize necessary choices in our responses to stress. She gave us tools to problem solve and communicate. She asked us to look out for others, and ourselves, including encouraging our co-workers to take breaks! An important message she provided was a framework for communication that will help us to respond instead of react through these tumultuous times. Another key point was to encourage us to establish boundaries and move toward focusing and performing in the workplace. Cindy did a great job encouraging conference attendees to role-play scenarios with her that really added to her teaching style and made it easier to believe that we could return to the office and implement the provided strategies.

Our last speaker of the day came to share some tips and tricks to make us more productive and more valuable to our organizations. Aaron Wyatt, Communications & Legislative Manager for the State Board of Education, gave us a tour of some available resources ranging from You Tube to Lynda.com memberships. He was able to achieve his own success with new projects by using common tools like Google & You Tube to learn sophisticated software like Dreamweaver and Excel. We are all becoming more familiar with taking on new tasks with limited or no training, so Aaron’s presentation was insightful and valuable.

The conference was concluded with a business meeting that helped direct the tone and content of future monthly meetings and conferences. Attendees also opened up the Bylaws and will have several changes to bring forth at a coming monthly meeting for the membership to review and decide whether to adopt the discussed changes.

Special thanks go to Starbucks, Stafford Creek Corrections Center, Cedar Creek Corrections Center, and the Washington State Employees Credit Union for the generous donations. Thanks, once again, to our conference planners! We appreciate you!

Jana Greer, EAG 2011-12 Chair

Beautiful flowers to compliment fabulous women

Janet Culik stepped up and designed beautiful materials.

Conference Chair Robin Riley was still smiling!

Xyzlinda Marshall, EAG 2011-12 Treasurer

Betsy Hagen, EAG Secretary/Historian for another year!

BEFORE

AFTER

Above: Xyzlinda, Jessica, Barb, Shannon, and desiree.

Below: Shannon and Barb.