95+ attendees gathered on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at East Bank Club in Chicago for our April Chapter Meeting. It was a successful night of networking, giving back and knowledge sharing.
The night lead off with membership committee member Chris Walsh welcoming our members and guests which included this month’s five new members and fifteen guests. Chris provided a brief update on our membership growing over 300+ members and reviewed our upcoming events.
Chris was followed up by the CSI Chicago Foundation Committee providing and update on our 2019 Rebuilding Together Initiative. Rebuild Day is Saturday, April 27, 2019 and over 50 volunteers were secured and over $10,000 has been raised in the last 8 months for this year’s project. The committee made a last call for entering the “Sailing On Lake Michigan” raffle promotion before the raffle winner was selected at the end of the night. John McKevitt surprised the crowd by announcing he would match $25 for every $50 raffle ticket purchased throughout the night. At the end of the night the committee thanked everyone for participating in the raffle promotion and announced the winner of the Sailing On Lake Michigan raffle was Dan Warren.
The night then took a more serious turn with President Peter Grotenhuis informing the chapter that long time CSI Chicago Member and Past President W. Dean Walker had passed away and information on the services would be communicated via email to the membership. Dean embodied what CSI Chicago is all about and was instrumental in the success of the chapter. The chapter held a moment of silence to respect and honor W. Dean Walker.
Scott Conwell from the programming committee then introduced our speaker for the night, Diane Kerth, Director of Client Relations and Corporate Trainer, Dale Carnegie Training – Chicago. Diane’s interactive presentation focused on the importance of communication in construction projects that include diverse teams with variety of skills sets and personalities. Her hands on presentation and tools helped the audience understand their own personality style and addressed how to work better with others and shape your own behavior according to others personality styles. Diane was also able to help the audience with tools to identify others’ personality styles, which helps you collaborate more effectively and ultimately deliver higher quality projects. Diane then surprised the audience with a raffle of her own where Jeremy Olsen was the lucky winner of a Dale Carnegie Program valued at $1,995.
Thank you to everyone who attended to make this another successful Chapter Meeting event. Special thanks to Diane Kerth and our tabletop sponsors – ATAS International, Inc., Dale Carnegie, dormakaba USA, Inc., Guardian Equipment Co., and Sto Corp.
See photos from the event.