It is great to share that we belong to a chapter that has over 250 members spanning 5 counties (Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, and Riverside). We have won 5 Gold chapter awards with the recent one awarded in May 2017 during the IISE National Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Our mentors and advocates are active IISE Fellow members who continue to build up IISE leaders. No doubt our chapter have challenges in bringing together our members given our geography, but challenge is also the greatest driver of innovation. Our chapter wants to contribute to society by providing solutions, small or large.
Here are some questions we try to unravel this year thus far:
- Why are millennials struggling in the workplace?
- Where is the best place to meet as a group to minimize travel time given our traffic situation?
- How do you make facility tours more accessible to our members?
- How can we calibrate a productivity index to model local industries?
Some solutions have been discussed and prototyped while others are still incubating. People from various industries have volunteered their time to move things forward, but there is more to do.
We did find a local solution to our second problem that translated to a national solution. By leveraging geo mapping tools, we were able to better determine a central meeting area for events. I presented this geo mapping tool (Power Map for Excel) during the Volunteer Leadership Training (VoLT) session at the national conference, and the audience found this valuable to better serve the needs of their own local chapter memberships. The national IISE leadership is also excited about this technique and are partnering with the LA-OC team to assist them in using this tool in the months to come.
ISEs are problem solvers with numerous tools in our toolbox and by sharing our own solutions, we empower the IISE national and chapter leaders.
Geo Mapping Application of the LA-OC membership (By Michael Duncan):
Coming soon to an inbox near you: a multitude of events in the LA-OC chapter to facilitate professional networking and development, like the Leadership Conference, the Western Regional Conference in Las Vegas (2018), joint events with local professional organizations, facility tours, professional talks, and team building events (i.e., Escape Room).
How would you like to maximize your potential? Be an active member in your local chapter. Feel free to contact any members of the chapter board. I am just an email away if you wish to learn more about any topic I shared with you today – smpsasing@gmail.com or events@iiela.org.
At your service,
Stella Marie Mahakian
IISE LA-OC President 2017-2018
Thank you Stella for serving our membership. You were AWESOME as a speaker for the VoLT session at the conference also. * Kaz *
RE: Millenials. My experience is that millenials have greater comfort speaking with baby boomers than Gen X. Basically, the executives or senior staff than with middle management or direct supervisors. This leads to dissatisfaction in the work place hence the knock of millenials constantly moving on.
Is that the experience of those in ISE?