EuropeanPWN Board Elections and General Meeting News

The Presidents and leaders of the 17 City European Professional Women’s Network (EuropeanPWN) elected a new Board on Jan 22, 2010. The two day General Meeting was hosted in Barcelona, part of the federation since 2008. In addition to formal elections, the leaders exchanged ideas and insights on EuropeanPWN’s evolving vision, strategy and priorities for 2010 and beyond in response to significant growth in the number of networks, activities and strategic partners across Europe.

The assembly elected Marijo Bos and Rieke Smakman as Presidents along with Susanne Forsman-Hey, as Treasurer of the Federation and Sandrine Joseph as, Secretary General. Marijo, Rieke and Susanne served as Presidents of Madrid, Amsterdam and Nice respectively. Furthermore, Monica Pesce will continue in a Federation leadership role as a VP now focusing on Women on Boards, Karine Heckmann as VP New Networks and Ana Baranda and Malika Mir sharing the VP Technology role. Strategic Partnerships will be led by Marijo Bos and Marketing, Public Relations and other appointed leaders will be announced shortly.

The leaders of the networks reinforced EuropeanPWN’s values of win-win, generosity, and a focus on excellence and co creation of initiatives across networks. “One of our continuing priorities is to broaden and strengthen our strategic partnerships offering visibility on key initiatives at the European level while ensuring there is a strong local presence and connection with members across the local networks,” said Marijo Bos.

Rieke Smakman added, “It’s also a key priority for us to create even more opportunities through connecting, knowledge exchange and support across our networks since this is one of the great benefits of being part of a network across borders.” They both added, “it is a privilege to continue supporting the progress of women in business given the strong foundation that the outgoing board and the champions of this network have created.”

The new EuropeanPWN Board is pleased to serve as a facilitator of the exchange ideas and experts across networks, ensuring inclusion of ideas and support from local networks on the federation’s overall strategy and key priorities linked to this strategy. There will be a continued focus on achieving a high level of excellence for all of our stakeholders.

The outgoing board was responsible for achieving impressive expansion of the network and programs, now consisting of 3500 members across 17 city networks. Please follow this link to learn more about the numerous accomplishments under the former leadership and their outgoing message of support as we make this transition. Thank you to Mirella Visser, President since 2007, Marie-Claude Peyrache, Secretary-General (VP Corporate Affairs from 2007 – 2009), Brigitte Pichat-Sese, Treasurer (since January 2007), Therese Torris, VP Website Strategy (also VP Mentoring from 2007-2009), Annalisa Gigante, VP Women on Boards (since June 2007), Marijo Bos, VP Corporate Affairs (since June 2009), Monica Pesce, VP New Networks (since June 2009).