Annual General Meeting - an evening with a Christmas twist

By Sara Hayden, VP Membership at PWN Norway

The room was a buzz with high energy chatter as PWN Members connected and networked. Indeed, this was no ordinary monthly meeting, it was our Annual General Meeting with a Christmas twist. 

The board kindly provided cakes to accompany the food from the Thon Opera Hotel and we were treated to Kombucha cocktails from Empress Kombucha. We kicked off the formal part of the evening with a very active Needs & Leads session, where members informed us about their companies’ and recruitment opportunities.

The focus was then drawn to our volunteers and all PMs were presented with gifts and certificates of thanks for the time and strong efforts they have contributed to PWN Norway this year. Outgoing board members were also thanked, we wished our President, Alicia Partee, well as she leaves Norway for the USA to pursue business opportunities there. She will pass the Presidency on to our current Vice-President Eva Turk. We heard bios from all candidates for the 2020 board before voting commenced and after the 2020 board was voted in Alicia gave us updates on PWN Global’s numbers and initiatives in 2019 followed by the president’s report from 2019.

I, Sara Hayden, gave a brief report from the Membership team revealing data illustrating who our members are. Eva Turk reported out on Events for 2019, in total we had 30 events in 2019, including the recent Northern Lights weekend trip. She continued with exciting numbers from Stavanger that has reached 58 members in 2019 and negotiated their first corporate partnership. Aleksandra Orekhova, PWN Norway’s VP Marketing, reported on our continued growth and increasing online presence for Marketing. She was followed by two VP Partnerships, Sonia Gilde da Silva and Laura Roth who engaged us to think about what our companies could benefit from forming partnerships with PWN Norway and Aditi Jajal-Newey did outgoing VP Entrepreneurship, Renata Pereira, proud by listing the achievements of the Entrepreneurship team. We wrapped up the formal part of the evening with Angela Holter firing up our interests in the mentoring program with glowing endorsements from mentors and mentees alike and VP Technology, Yuwen He to give us a glimpse of what a transparent and effective online communication could bring.

All that was left was to share gifts and celebrate together on what a productive 2019 it has been.