Hi everyone,
So great to be able to personally interact and catch up with so many of you at the Academy of Management Meeting in Seattle August 5-9 and so fabulous to connect with so many others on-line!
Now that the AOM Meeting and associated travel and tech headaches, health worries and overall anxiety have hopefully subsided and after what has ideally been a stimulating and rewarding AOM followed by at least a few days of relaxation for all involved, as incoming Division Chair, I want to personally thank the members of the Careers Division Executive Committee who toiled for months to make this year's very challenging, multi-format Careers Program a success. Kudos to Careers own Denise Jepsen, Program Chair; Serge da Motta Veiga, Professional Development Workshop Chair; Jos Akkermans, Division Chair; Gina Dokko, Immediate Past Division Chair; Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Treasurer; Erin Makarius, Secretary; Melika Shirmohammadi, Editor, Career Forum; Alycia Damp, Community Moderator; Victor Chen, Web Master; Sherry Sullivan, Archivist/Historian; as well as our invaluable Reps-at-Large: Alycia Damp, Silvia Dello Russo, Mel Fugate, Stefanie Gustafsson, Alex Newman, Beatrice Van der Heijden, Marijke Verbruggen, Jeff Yip and Janine Bosak! And, in line with live Careers AOM programs of the past, I also want to thank our many members who jumped in and volunteered simply to help when and where we needed it (you know who you are!) in addition to welcoming Daniel Spurk, our new PDW Chair; Alison Dachner, our new Treasurer, and our new Reps-at-Large: Noemi Nagy, Rebecca Paluch and Caitlin Porter. Your support and willingness to serve are especially important as we work to continuously improve the value we provide to our members during and outside the annual meeting. A hearty thank you to all and a special note of thanks to Gina, Jen, Beatrice, Stefanie and Marijke whose formal service to our division has ended (at least for now)! You are already missed.
I am truly in awe of your dedication and inspired by your resilience. It takes a village to pull off such a challenging hybrid program. If you would, please take the time to respond to this message or reach out to these volunteers who do their best day in, day out to support our division in so many ways…
I also want to take the time to thank those of you who organized and presented Careers symposia and PDWs along with authors who submitted so many great papers to our division as well as the reviewers who reviewed them. We look forward to receiving more great proposals and papers for AOM Boston in 2023 and CarCon 2 Amsterdam in 2024 because, without good work, it is impossible to have strong programs.
We are truly indebted to our many submitters and owe special gratitude to the discussants of these sessions as well. Our program covered a wide range of salient careers topics and I was fortunate to attend and participate in a large number of them. Your engagement means a lot especially during what has been a very difficult couple of years for so many of our members and their families, myself included, despite coinciding with a business and organizational environment that has been eminently generative. In fact, I have no doubt that these past few years and several years into the future will ultimately be viewed as a critically important era for careers researchers, instructors and practitioners around the globe. If you are in Careers, you are in the right place at the right time!
I also want to thank all of you who made our in-person social gathering (which seemed more like a family reunion) at Pike Brewing Company, a social for the ages as the staff had to flicker the lights to get us to leave! I also want to thank Serge for hosting our on-line social that also drew a lively crowd from around the world as well. Thanks to all.
I want to show my gratitude to all of you, inside and outside our division, who participated in these sessions from across the globe - on-line, in-person and often both - sometimes at very challenging times with nary a minute to get from one session to the next. I also want to thank our sponsors: the Macquarie Business School (platinum level sponsor), University of Victoria, Gustavson School of Business (silver level sponsor) and the John Reed Center for Careers (bronze level sponsor) for your gracious financial support as well as the AOM Program Team for your technical support. We appreciate you so much.
I also want to thank those who organized, presented and participated in our Careers Division Business Meeting and the Everett C. Hughes Award Speech by Stephen Barley that brought many attendees, including myself, right back to our roots and the provocative research questions and historical context that drew us to careers research in the first place. Great job, Steve, and truly inspiring! Thanks also to Maury Peiperl for introducing Steve and for providing the gravitas that this session so richly deserved.
We are so fortunate for our strong foundation and I am fortunate to be able to stand on the shoulders of so many fabulous division chairs that have come before me. And, at this time, I also want to share with you that, as is the case for so many of our members, our division has always been my AOM "home away from home". I care very much for our division and I look forward to working with our Executive Committee, Strategic Committees (mentoring; research collaboration; membership; prestige & impact; value beyond August) and Standing Committees (doctoral consortium; annual meeting socials; communication and social media) to continue to improve our offerings and add new elements while striving to provide better value to our membership as it relates to the annual meeting format and cost/benefit. I am excited for an engaging and productive year. Stay tuned!
Last but not least, I want to thank all of you who attended the Careers Division Awards Ceremony and Networking Event where I gave it my all in emceeing a celebration of the best that our division has to offer. We kept the element of surprise alive all the way until the winners were announced and I appreciate the support of Denise, Jos, Gina and others who helped make everything go as smoothly as possible. What a great celebration! The socializing afterwards was fabulous as well. To the winners and nominees, I am humbled by your great work and you are an inspiration to us all.
On that note, in case you weren't able to make it to our awards ceremony in person, in coming posts I am going to recognize awards committee members and highlight the winners and finalists who earned plaques and certificates not only to highlight their excellent work, but to hopefully also inspire you to even greater heights yourselves in the months and years ahead.
Take care and all the best,
Rick
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Rick Cotton
Associate Professor
University of Victoria
Victoria BC
(250) 721-8052
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