Message from the President

It has been such a busy and wonderful summer and fall. We had so many well attended events to wrap up 2008, culminating in the Holiday Party at Judge Uplinger's home in December. Many thanks to Judge Uplinger for hosting us! It was a beautiful event.

We also had two note worthy events in November - our Pro Bono Training CLE and our Eight-Minute Mentoring. Trista O'Hara did a wonderful job putting the CLE together and we thank our speakers Mary John and Susan Griffith for presenting the material. Our Vice President, Heidi McCormick, did a wonderful job planning and the Eight-Minute Mentoring event. We held the event at the Law School this year and it was a great success, with the added bonus that many law students have become interested in our association. We welcome their attendance at all of our events.

We are now well on our way and planning for spring events and are hoping to provide the same quality and quantity of events for you as our Members. Please visit our website, which is newly updated, for a listing of all of our upcoming events.

We have some very good news for one of our Members, Karen DeCrow, who received both the Distinguished Lawyer Award from the Onondaga County Bar Association as well as the Ruth G. Schapiro Memorial Award from the New York State Bar Association. There are articles on both in the newsletter and we congratulate Karen.

We look forward to seeing all of you at our upcoming events. We have a chamber chat with the Honorable Margaret Cangilos-Ruiz scheduled for March 4 which will provide members an informal atmosphere to have lunch with and speak with the Judge. The Women in Law and Women in Medicine Dinner is also scheduled for April 2nd. We have an exciting program for that dinner and four area female college presidents have agreed to join our panel and share their insights with all of us regarding the educational process as well as becoming a woman leader.

Thank you all being supportive of this wonderful organization and I look forward to seeing you soon!

Zea M. Wright
President