35 Southwest The start of 2021 began much like the majority of 2020, virtually. Sadly, virtual meetings are far from the networking and social aspect the Society generally provides. It certainly brings new avenues to the educational aspect of our community, which hopefully we can continue to explore, but it lacks connectedness. In a virtual world, this is not the easiest to accomplish, so we worked to try a few new things this year as the country slowly started to open back up. Our first trial into bringing connection was during February’s monthly meeting, our first virtual Game Night! The southwest chapter members separated into teams and competed for prizes through challenges and trivia. We all had a blast, and greatly enjoyed seeing one another in a new way for the first time in over a year. Through the first half of 2021, we remained virtual, and taking advantage of the platform invited speakers from all over the US, sharing their presentations nationally. While we had a lot of great speakers and plan to continue to have the occasional virtual educational meetings, we were very ready to get back to seeing one another in person, and were super excited to host a summer Meat & Great in August. To bring in a little chemistry fun, we held the social event at Messina Hof Winery, where chapter members learned about how the various types of wine were made and their food pairing of choice! During September, we generally host our bi-annual Educational Seminar, but with the COVID cases still prevalent we were still skeptical to host a larger gathering. With that, we chose to continue our virtual education, holding an Educational Month in which we had a new speaker each week of September. The educational series was themed “Changing With Change”, and held topics ranging from scale up processing, clean in 2021, and finding white space in product innovation. The latter of which was so popular she held the talk twice! A true thank you to all of our speakers, both for the series and for the entirety of 2021. In October, to continue with the industry opening back towards in person events and working to highlight connectedness and adaptation, the next event held was a mini supplier’s day located at a local brewery, a fun Trunk-or-Treat for the Halloween spirit. Chapter members were able to peruse supplier goodies, reconnect, and, for a little fun, learn how to brew beer! It was a great adaptation, allowing for a small gathering to reconnect and have a little fun! Following suit from 2020, we then held our annual golf event in November. The weather had turned out nice from the previous year, so we thought best to keep the new tradition. The event, like always, was highly anticipated and great fun! It was a true pleasure to continue to see the Chapter reconnect after all of the time that had passed in separation.

36 And last, but certainly not least, the SWSCC held our annual End of Year Dinner Dance. The party was decreased in capacity to work to maintain safety in numbers, but was held in great style, working to bring some fun and energy to overcome the stress and anxiety we have all been experiencing in these last years, themed BRING ON THE GLOW! Hopefully, the energy of the party will be contagious, carrying us on to continue the adaptation needed to bring us into our new normal. St. Louis Bret Schweid “Trends, Technology and Solution for Textured Hair” was held on Thursday, August 5th at 1:00 CST. Abstract: Textured Hair Care has gone mainstream. Gone are the days when you would only find one or two products on the shelf that would be marketed for “Ethnic” hair. Today, you will find all types of solutions for curly, coily and wavy hair. Biography: Bret Scheid is currently the Director of Technical Development at Azelis CARE Americas. He is a 30-year Personal Care industry veteran having also worked for Colgate-Palmolive and National Starch & Chemical / Akzo Nobel in various technical roles. He has a BA in Biology from the University of Chicago and an MBA in Marketing from Rutgers University. In today's topic Bret will discuss the market, its needs and solutions for Textured Hair care. 2021 Annual Scientific Symposium – Finally, 2021 allowed us to begin planning in person meetings and socializing! Due to corporate restrictions, the early part of the year was still limited to virtual meetings and webinar. Although apprehensive as to the attendance, we decided to have our Annual Scientific Symposium at the St. Louis Renaissance Hotel, Friday, September 17th, 2021. Once we sent the invite out, we were very pleased at the strong response by our chapter to attend! We also had a great response from speakers which included the below line up. • David C. Steinberg, (Steinberg and Assc): “Preservatives: What Can We Use Now?!” • Alan Perlman (Business Development Director): “The New cGMP Audit Standard for Cosmetics/Personal Care”