PMI Toronto Chapter Member,
I hope you and your families are well. Our Chapter celebrates its 46^th anniversary this year, and we look forward to increasing your membership value. Please review our updated Calendar of Events with many opportunities for your development and to network. Please visit and participate. If you have not already done so, please sign up for our Weekly Scope Newsletter to inform you of our upcoming events and activities.

Annual General Meeting and Annual Members Meeting

On November 17, 2021 we held our Annual General Meeting and Annual Members Meeting (AGM/AMM), which went through our yearly results and we heard from many members of the Board. Following the AGM/AMM the Chapter held an exciting talk by Hans Eckman, Building Emotional Fitness to Lead During Difficult Times. The session taught us how to up our game by improving our resilience and ability to deal with stress and uncertainty.

Leadership Institute Management (LIM) Update

Congratulations once again to the PMIT leadership members who participated in October’s Leadership Institute Meeting. Congratulations to Bola Otaraki on becoming a PMI LIMC (Leadership Institute Master Class) graduate! Thanks again to Ricardo Macorin, Roberta Jane Heggie, and Christine Blair for representing our Chapter so well with fantastic presentations. If you missed it please read the highlights in our recent blog.

Chapter Guest Pass+

For a limited time, we are offering a few Chapter memberships for one year for any persons who have their PMI Global membership and who would like to try out our Toronto Chapter. Feel free to share this opportunity with your friends and contacts who are not yet members of our Chapter. As the world struggles with many supply chain issues and some holiday gifts may be in jeopardy, here is a gift that we can deliver on time.

If you are interested, please email info@pmitoronto.ca to request the passes for your friends and contacts. We will require their name, email address, and PMI number.

PMI Global Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

We remain aligned with PMI Global concerning in-person events. PMI Global will not be hosting in-person events in North America through to December 2021. See more details here. However, PMI Global continues to provide member value through virtual sessions similar to the ones below. We plan to re-evaluate our in-person status in the New Year.

Upcoming Authorized Training Partner (ATP) Certification Courses

During this quarter, our Board approved the continuation of our ATP for one more year. Dennis Abuan, Director of Communications and ATP Operations, and Mac Wilson, Certification & Training Manager, continue to do excellent work in this area. Our Chapter continues to hold certification courses through our Authorized Training Partner (ATP) program. Please check out our Certification Course Calendar for the upcoming certification courses in 2022. Many of us know the significant positive impact that globally recognized certifications can have on one's career. 

I am thankful for the training provided by our training team that supported me in acquiring my Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master certification (DASSM) in October 2021.

Branches and Communities (BC) + Academia Portfolio

Claire Dobbin, Director of Branches and Communities, is also leading the Academia portfolio. She works with Vassilis Anastasiadis, VP Branches and Communities, the Chairs, Vice Chairs, and their teams. On November 18, 2021, the BC portfolio hosted a great event called, Northern Ontario Community: De-risking Digital Adoption - How to turn change skeptics into empowered change leaders?

Claire works with Sergio Rodrigues, VP Academia, and his team as we seek to deepen our relationship with schools and support the Ontario Project Management Competition (OPMC). The academia team supports the student groups with judges, guest speakers, and panellists for events hosted by PMI Toronto and the student associations. They always welcome the involvement of experienced project professionals to assist the next generation of project professionals. If you are interested in engaging with students by sharing your experiences, see the VRMS posted volunteer opportunities or email the volunteer team at volunteers@pmitoronto.ca.
 
The Academia team led an informative group session for all schools in October entitled, Learn About PMI, Certifications, and the Toronto Chapter! They will continue to hold groups and individual sessions throughout the year. Let us support the Academia team as best as we can.

Career Development Portfolio

Bola Otaraki is the Director responsible for this portfolio. She is accountable for our mentoring programs, the Career Accelerator Program (CAP) led by Pradeep Bonnell and Lorenzo Gutierrez and the Professional Mentoring Program led by Chirag Shah. We successfully launched our Fall 2021 session of the CAP program recently. Bola will also be working on Newcomer Programs. These programs will build skills that can lead to career opportunities and provide more career information, including: 

• Newcomer success stories
• Newcomer Toolkit, comprising useful links
• Newcomer Annual Career Day
• Career Corner

 Bola's team will be deploying a webpage soon. Stay tuned.

Communications

Dennis Abuan, Director of Communications and our ATP Operations and Sandy Matos, Vice President/Creative Director, Communications, continue to deliver excellent outputs with the Weekly Scope, blogs, and through our social media platforms. These sources will inform you of events and opportunities available directly through our Chapter, PMI Global and our collaborating partners.

Please continue visiting our social media platforms to remain updated on our Chapter's events and share these details with your contacts:

• LinkedIn  
• Twitter 
• Instagram  
• Facebook  

Disciplined Agile (DA)

We plan to launch a pilot DA Community soon. Ricardo Macorin, Secretary-Treasurer, continues to work with our DA Ambassador Team to promote iterative workshops focused on the DA Toolkit and bring the participants much hands-on experience.   

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) Committee

Roberta Jane Heggie, current DEI Committee Chair, will be leaving our Chapter moving out West. Thank you, Jane, for your outstanding work. Christine Blair becomes the new Committee Chair, and their team will continue their work on DE&I this year. Please add a placeholder in your calendars for the following Chapter meeting dates:

• Black History Month - February 17, 2022
• Women's History - March 24, 2022
• Pride Month - June 22, 2022

We plan to continue the cross-chapter collaboration discussions with the Chapters below and PMI Global. These Chapters will be involved with some of our events.

• PMI Dallas Chapter
• PMI Delaware Valley Chapter
• PMI New Jersey Chapter
• PMI Lakeshore Chapter
• PMI Rochester Chapter

Finance 

Michael Becker, Director of Finance, successfully led the Board through the approval of our FY22 budget. He will continue to support our Chapter in our finances as we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue using digital tools like Telpay to manage our Chapter's finances on behalf of our members, volunteers, partners, and vendors. 

Membership

The team held their first New Member Orientation (NMO) and networking event using Kumonspace at the end of October. Tracy Dyba is the Director responsible for the Membership portfolio, with the support of Zhaleh Malek, VP Membership. Keep checking the Calendar of Events for more information. They will also support our Chapter by seeking more ways to provide additional member benefits.   

Ontario Project Management Competition (OPMC)

The OPMC team held their Fall information session for students on November 3, 2021. For additional information, please visit the OPMC webpage. The OPMC team may suggest that student teams choose projects that benefit the local community and align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Professional Development

Manaf Malazi, VP of Professional Development, Hitomi Mochizuki, Chair of the PD Portfolio, ensured effortless events from communicating with speakers to creating event slides and setting up avenues for members to ask questions. We look forward to more great Chapter meetings and webinars in the future. Do you have a project that you would like to share with our members? If so, we want to hear your story! Please submit your speaking proposal and indicate using the online Speaker Proposal Form.

Quarterly Canadian Online Events—Share Your Success Story

Karthik Srinivasan, Project Lead, Quarterly Canadian Online Events, lead this initiative, and he will identify a few fantastic speakers. Please add a placeholder in your calendars for our first meeting on Thursday, December 2, 2021, at 6:30 pm. Some of the other topics planned include:

• Data Monetization
• Transformation
• People Transformation
• Bio-Diversity
• Next-Gen Capabilities
• Innovation

We are grateful for the support of our Past Presidents, Peter Monkhouse, Lynn Shannon, and Marc Blanchette, as well as our Secretary-Treasurer Ricardo Macorin for this initiative. Through this initiative, PMIT will highlight Canadian project managers who worked on exciting, high-profile, and challenging projects throughout the past year. Do you have a project that you would like to share with our members? If so, we want to hear from you! Please submit your speaking proposal and indicate "Quarterly Canadian Online Events" in the Part B-Presentation Info of the online Speaker Proposal Form.

Technology and Analytics Portfolio

Bernie Crawford, Director of Technology and Analytics (TA) and his team continue to provide significant support to our Chapter. They are developing a few approaches to provide more online content for our members potentially. Stay tuned to learn more.

Volunteer Opportunities + Affiliate Program

The team held its first New Volunteer Orientation (NVO) session this quarter at the end of October. Iain Shao, Director responsible for Volunteers, and Pradeep Bonnell, VP, Volunteers, continue to perform excellent work with our volunteers. As we ramp up our year, we will have many new volunteer opportunities available. Here are the key steps, if you or someone you know would be interested in volunteering with our Chapter: 

1. Visit the Volunteer Relationship Management System (VRMS) tool at https://vrms.pmi.org/.
2. Create a volunteer profile.
3. Upload resume.
4. Search and apply for volunteer opportunities in VRMS.
5. If you did not find a position that fits your qualifications or if you have questions, you can email the volunteer team at volunteers@pmitoronto.ca.

On November 20, 2021, the workshop entitled, Leading Change and Experience the Wicked Problem Solving Movement was held in collaboration with other Ontario Chapters. Please check out our Affiliate Program, for more information on future programs.

Youth and Social Impact Coordinator

We are in the process of interviewing for this role. We have a few candidates under consideration. Led by Ricardo Macorin, Secretary-Treasurer, our Chapter continues to work on its Social Good. We will share more details soon.
 
We have many opportunities planned for an eventful year. Feel free to reach out and become more engaged. We will do our best to keep you safe.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Jeffrey Thompson DBA, PMP, DASSM, CSM
PMI Toronto Chapter President