I thank all of you, the members of our Section, for the privilege of serving as your Chair this year. We have much to celebrate. This year we resumed hosting our outstanding educational programs in person, and we launched two significant new events, the inaugural Committee Showcase in May and the Council strategic planning meeting in September. We also continued to find meaningful opportunities for remote participation in the Section. As one outstanding example, in November and December, our Section’s “10-Day Tune Up” provided the opportunity for Section members to examine race and racial equity in the legal profession via remote discussion groups. This was an outstanding example of how the Section can bring members across the country together for engaging dialogue on significant issues.
August 23, 2023 Column
News from the Chair
Annejanette Pickens
We also reinvigorated the Section’s long-standing tradition of providing agencies thoughtful comments on proposed regulations. Most notably, no less than 20 Section members worked together to draft a 21-page comment letter on a proposed rule on greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks. These comments reflect the collective insights of practitioners from all corners of the procurement world. They are emblematic of the invaluable thought leadership that our Section provides the procurement community.
Viewed as a whole, this year we collectively have reaffirmed the place this Section long has held in the public procurement community and, for many of us, in our professional lives as the preeminent place for public procurement professionals to become more informed, to interact with peers, and to grow as leaders of our bar. I look forward to many successes for our Section in the years to come.