11 Midwest The year 2020 was a time for adapting and innovating. The plans we set up in January were foiled early in the year as the global pandemic brought a halt to all our live meetings after March. We had excellent live member turnout for both our February and March meetings. Then we switched to all digital for April, May and in the fall. Here are some of the highlights. February: Our kickoff meeting featured a talk about fermentation by well-known industry scientist, Dr Vince Gruber. We had over 100 members attend where they participated in the trivia contest, direct human to human talking (who knew that would be a luxury) and they saw us give away 3 scholarships for deserving students. March: This month we teamed up with the WFFC (a local perfumers organization) and had a technical talk about the sustainability of natural ingredients. The event had a social nature to it also as it was held at a Top Golf in the area and after members got some excellent advice on working with natural ingredients, they also got to work on their golf game. Little did we know this would be the last in-person meeting of the year.

12 April: We had scheduled to do our bi-annual Teamworks event and things were going great up until the state shut down all such events. Instead, we switched it up and held our first webinar meeting which featured a talk from Frances Troy about minerals in cosmetic products. This event was attended live by over 140 members. May: This is when we featured our second webinar which focused on cosmetic preservation, a talk by Susan Pungitore. We had nearly 240 members tune in live for this event. It was the most people we had at a monthly meeting. The summer is when we typically take off, but we returned at the end of August for a two-day course on Sustainability in Cosmetic Formulating. This course is normally taught in person by Wen Schroder, but we again adapted to an online event which worked out well. September: Our first fall meeting brought in a special speaker, Debbie Vyskocil to teach us about strategies for dealing with the stress of daily life and particularly for conditions under the pandemic. October: When we couldn't have Teamworks in April, we switched it to October but then realized even then we wouldn't be allowed to have an in-person event. So, we adapted again and created a full-day webinar (over 9 hours) that we called our Teamworks Virtual Raw Material Summit. The event featured a full day of talks on cosmetic raw materials. We had topics ranging from cleansers, preservatives, thickeners, emulsifiers, colorants and nearly every other cosmetic raw material you can think of. There were over 30 educational presentations, and the event was attended by well over 2000 people from around the world. We want to especially thank all of our participating suppliers and supporters! It was an excellent event. November: The final meeting of the year was another online event. Since this is normally our Emeritus Meeting, we decided to create an interview video with participation by over a dozen of our emeritus members. This video was well received. The meeting also featured another round of Cosmetic Science in 300 Seconds. This is a speed presentation event where speakers had exactly 5 minutes and 20 slides to give a compelling talk. Three members including Amanda Rountree, Paige DeGarmo, and Ashraf Hossain tried their hand at the format and did an excellent job. We also had the officer installation and used a new software format called Run The World to do a virtual one-on-one cocktail party. This unique event let members speak directly to other people who were at the virtual meeting. It was almost like being at a live meeting. While it was challenging at times and different than we first imagined, this year was a successful one in terms of providing value for members and educating people about cosmetic science. Although we look forward to being able to participate in person once again, this year has shown us that we can still operate, and the SCC is still relevant & beneficial even in an online world. It has been my honor to serve this year. Perry Romanowski Midwest SCC Chair 2020