President's Message

January 10, 2010

Dear Leadership Morgan Hill Alumni, Board Members and Sponsors,

I’m Priya Smith, graduate of the of Class of 2008, and proudly serving as the current president of Leadership Morgan Hill. As we begin a new year, I wanted to give all of you an update on our activities.

We have just concluded another year with a great class who completed an amazing project! In September, the Class of 2009 held a fair titled Volunteer Morgan Hill to encourage people to volunteer in the community. There were close to 50 non-profit agencies participating and there were hundreds of people in attendance! Congratulations to the Class of 2009 on their successful project and completion of the program.

Each year, due to board terms, we have several board members leaving and several new board members joining the team. The board members who recently left the board are: Karl Bjarke, Nick Boden, Maureen Drewniany, Ken Manuele and Steven Stratton. A big thanks to them all for their tremendous service and dedication to Leadership Morgan Hill!

The board members joining us this year are: Sharron Daniel (Class of '09), Victor Gaxiola (Class of '09), Ken Meagor (Class of '08) and Christine Warner (Class of '08). Congratulations to them all! We are thrilled to have them join the board.

We also have a new executive team leading the board in planning for the coming year. The President is Priya Smith (Class of '08), Vice President is Diane Silveira (Class of '07), Treasurer is Jeff Roth Class of ('04), Secretary is Dana Ditmore and Past President is Paige Riveron (Class of '06).

We just completed our recruiting efforts for the Class of 2010 and are delighted with the group we have selected! We kicked off the program with our 18 students with an orientation this past week and the group is currently attending their opening retreat at Vallambrosa. We wish them every success on the program and their class project. Our Alumni committee is busy planning events for this year. A survey was sent out to Alumni to determine topics of interest for fireside chats. So be on the lookout for more information in the weeks ahead.

The members of the Class of 2010 are:

Dolores Alvarado
Kathy Anderson
Julie Barraza
Tammy Brownlow
Rosie Cornejo
Adam Ferguson
Adam Galloway
December Green
Karin Johnson
Scott Joines
James Keen
Ann-Marie Lemmerman
John McKay
Jeffrey Nunes
Ajaiey Sharma
Deborah Sierra
Alma Vandenraadt
Linda Withrow

We also are updating our look! Visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LeadershipMorganHill and become a fan! You can also follow us on our new Twitter page www.twitter.com/LeadershipMH and give us your real time feedback on this blog.

We are excited about our new class and all of the work that we are doing to help continue to keep Leadership Morgan Hill successful and a worthy community partner. Our key focus areas for this year are to update our website, fundraising and recruiting for next year’s class. But we can’t do it without YOU. We need your involvement in our working committees so if you have specific interests, please let any of us know. We look forward to an exciting year ahead!

Priya Smith