22 The SCJ campus tour was held in the afternoon, followed by a dinner meeting with Dow Chemical educating us about Silicone regulations in various global regions. Thanks to the financial success of Teamworks, the chapter was able to fund 2 vans at no cost to members in IL desiring to attend the Racine WI meeting without having to drive – with 1 of the vans dedicated just to UIC students. Teamworks was a success again this year – with some awesome “firsts” of its own. Thanks to Crystal Rampaul and Rachel Grabenhofer (of Allured), not only did we have student posters for the first time ever at Teamworks – we had 14 posters from 6 educational institutions! Corporate sponsorships enabled the Midwest Chapter to cover the costs for all 14 students to stay at a hotel near the venue, participate in our Social Night, and for travel to/from the event. In conjunction with the NYSCC Chapter, the first and second place poster winners, Margaret Gorz and Syndey Holland (both from University of Toledo) enjoyed a fully paid trip to a New Formulators workshop during NYSCC Suppliers Day. Thank you Marcie Papadakis (of Neuryon) for coordinating the Poster Judging, as I am told decisions were hard and the scores were close. Both Margaret and Sydney are now employed by Nuskin and Estee Lauder – joining other recent students whose MWSCC involvement resulted in placement at member companies of ours like Azelis, Solo Labs, American Blending and Ecoco. The NextGen initiative is seeing much deeper relationships between MWSCC, other chapters and SCC National with various institutions and individual students throughout the nation. Teamworks enjoyed record-breaking attendance for our Social Night with over 300 people! We automated our Call for Papers and Call for Posters so everything was done online. We elevated our sponsorship levels, combining Social Night and Teamworks and offering more sponsorship options for companies to choose from. Sponsorships enabled things like a University of Toledo booth – our first booth at Teamworks from a NextGen educational partner. We did an extensive post-event survey that provided excellent input on how to make Teamworks 2020 even better. Cinda Carlson (my Teamworks co-Chair), IAMI (our tradeshow vendor) and PDR Designs (our webmaster) did an incredible job – especially since incorporating as many changes as we did into the event was not easy. Teamworks also benefited from continued collaboration and support from SCC National and NYSCC. NYSCC sponsored a booth as well as a breakfast. National SCC sponsored and staffed a booth – but also organized 2 CEP courses the day before our Teamworks Education and Suppliers Day. Both NYSCC and National are now a key part of our event that we expect will continue year after year. Marcie Papadakis renewed our efforts on membership, going beyond member retention and into truly understanding and communicating the value of SCC membership. Marcie worked tirelessly to position us better than we have in years for early capture of member renewals. She has developed materials around SCC value, and positioned member survey questions, to capture how we can best serve our members – and those who are not members by understanding what companies and individuals most seek from our educational organization.

23 We went digital on our communications this year for our SCCOOP newsletter, and our website got better each month as PDR designs elevated aesthetics and content throughout the year. Our events and activities are literally reliant on the quality of our promotion and ease of registration of each event and activity – it cannot be overstated how important this function is to our success. We were one of the last chapters to stop printing and mailing our newsletter. The printing and postage were not only expensive – but time consuming – posing challenges literally every month to be able to get the issues mailed out in time for early registration discounts for our events. The chapter sadly incurred a large personal loss when our webmaster, Paul Romanowski, died suddenly and at a young age, in December. It is with heavy heart we had to say good-bye to Paul unexpectedly, as he was such an integral part of our chapter success in recent years. Perry Romanowski is working with our 2019 MWSCC Board to continue our news and registration functions as a permanent solution is found. Quick Books was implemented by our Treasurer-Elect, Frank Wagner (of SCT) with help from SCC National Treasurer Liz Streland (of Croda) along with other changes in how we capture and report our financial activities. The result is that we have ready and immediate access to very detailed information around revenue and expense streams for all our events and activities. It used to take us days (literally) to compose our year-end financial statement and annual budget. With the improvements undertaken by Frank, this now takes only a few hours. All activities, events and questions during the year related to finances have seen similar gains in efficiency and time – our most valuable resource! It was a year of vision, hard work and diligence – exhausting but rewarding! Our chapter remains challenged for enough volunteers at a leadership level to continue the quality of programs, activity and enrichment undertaken this past year. We look to our National and Area II leaders and colleagues to help us with this ongoing challenge. A big thank you to the “village” it takes to make MWSCC a success, our dedicated 2018 MWSCC Board. One of whom, Anatoly Dameshek, received the Stanley Allured Lifetime Award for service to the MWSCC chapter – along with Frank Jarzemboski, post-humous (a first): Peggy Bennett Bob Buzzelli Cinda Carlson Dennis Ciechna Anatoly Dameshek Chris Daraska Gene Frank Katie Harris Ashraf Hossain Lisa Kringas Mary Milinko Marcie Papadakis Crystal Rampaul Perry Romanowski Frank Wagner Cindy Yu Deborah Zartler 2018 MWSCC Chair