Pledge
Mike Kelly led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Inspiration
Cap Willey gave the inspiration.
Today is Election Day. The Day which ends the political advertisements everywhere, although I hear that the campaign for 2028 starts tomorrow. Some thoughts on the importance of elections.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
-Abraham Lincoln
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
- Franklin Roosevelt.
The right to vote is the right upon which all other rights depend.
- Thomas Paine
Every election is determined by the people that show up.
-Larry Sabato
If you don’t vote, you lose your right to complain.
-George Carlin
On Zoom
Lew Hassell, Sam New, Michael Durand, Priya Banerjee, Marie Bernando-Sousa, Barry Fain, Paul Pimentel.
Visitors
Michael Semper from Merit-Potential member and Simone Fargiorgio- Potential Member.
Announcements
- Hope you all vote today
- Nomination Committee needs to be established to come up with a slate for 2025. Sharon Garland will chair.
- Next Board meeting is November 19, 2024 at 11 am at The Marriott
- District Governor, Sharon Johnson will be coming on December 3rd. Board members are required to attend a pre-lunch meeting with Sharon.
- Magical Foundation Luncheon will be held on Sunday, November 17 from 11:30 to 3 pm at White’s of Westport. Many clubs will be receiving awards to recognize their Foundation giving. The special guest speaker is Mike McGovern, the chair of Rotary International Polio Plus Committee.
- Need someone to help with audio and visual at our meetings. Thank you to Bill Applegate for his assistance with audio/visual at meetings. Please reach to Pete if you are interested.
- Would like to find assistance to provide a certificate of appreciation for our speakers. Jane Berkowicz has sent out thank you letters to speakers. Kris David suggested that these certificates can be generated through our Rotary Brand Center.
Happy Bucks
- Bill Applegate gave 10 Happy Bucks for Barry Fain who was attended our meeting via zoom and hoping our Owl works. (Note we are working on the sound and video quality after hearing complaints.)
- Anthony Landi gave 10 Happy Bucks for the received $100,000 from Margaret Kane’s estate.
- Richard Applebaum gave a Happy Buck for being back in Providence.
- Luis Lourenco gave 5 Happy Buck for his joining a new CPA firm called CBIZ, formerly Marcum.
- Anthony Hollingshead gave Happy Bucks for members coming in, Michael Semper and Simone Fargiorgio who will both be installed at our next meeting.
- Laurie White gave 20 Happy Bucks for Cap Willey who have been invaluable to the Chamber of Commerce.
- Pete Brock gave 5 Happy Bucks for his dog, Yaeger who went out for a great walk and he is glad that the emails and spam calls for the election have ended.
Speaker
Jane Berkowicz introduced our Speaker, Laurie White, President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce (GPCC).
Laurie is the first female President of GPCC in its 150 year history. She is a honors graduate of the University of Rhode Island in Journalism. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism/Digital Media, Rhode Island School of Design, Digital Design/Multimedia, Executive Education and University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Directors’ Consortium.
As President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce since 2005, she has initiated courageous thinking and action with a formed coalition in 2011 with the business community that defeated a proposal to increase sales taxes in the state and in 2016, the chamber was the only business association in the state to support Governor Raimondo’s plan to fund improvements to Rhode Island’s bridges and roads. Her vision and innovation paved the way for a development the State’s Knowledge Economy and her community mindedness as a community leader committed to making Rhode Island a better place for it people and institutions.
Laurie White started with on three things:
- Amazing center of activity in the Knowledge District/ jewelry/ 195 district/ parks/new bridge for job production
- The advent of artificial Intelligence will be using generative AI for future jobs and transformation of the work force. How to use AI and benefit from it.
- Return to the office scenarios will accelerate in 2025.Companies are asking employees to return to the office.
Laurie opened up questions with her Ask Me Anything focus. Rotarians asked about the recent receivership of The Providence Place Mall, the efforts to keep Hasbro here, the concern of education in our Providence School System, the role of business intervention into the schools. She mentioned all our Past Rotarian, Arthur Robbins was a champion of charter school education with his Textron Charter School.
