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President's Message May, 2006
Dear SIP Members and Friends: I am honored to be elected as the new president of SIP for 2006-2007 term. I have been an active member of Anjoman (SIP) since 1995 and have had the pleasure of continuous cooperation with SIP as an officer or a volunteer. I am very grateful that through SIP, I have met so many wonderful people that many of them have gradually become some of my best friends. Of course, this has been only one of many great benefits that I have received throughout the years due to my membership in SIP. Those who have been a member of SIP for many years confirm that personal and professional growth in many ways are also some of the other important residual dividends for any long term member of SIP. This was my prime motivation in stepping forward and accepting this challenge to lead SIP as it has begun a new phase of its life since last year. I would like to reach out to all of you and ask for your warm and strong hands to rebuild it stronger than ever before and turn it to a jumping board in Northern California for many young Iranian-American professionals to achieve more and more glories for Iran and Iranians everywhere. I would like to congratulate new officers of SIP for accepting the challenge of leading SIP to a new era of greatness: Ms. Parisa Javaheri and Mr. Mohammad Bakhshi and thank the four dedicated officers who decided to run for the second year and strengthen the revived SIP: Ms. Mehraneh Farahani, Mr. Masoud Keshmiri, Mr. Shahriar Motie, and Mr. Mansour Fardanesh. I also like to congratulate Mr. Mortaza Samak who was elected as a board member, and express my sincere appreciation to the existing board members: Dr. Liza Fartash, Mr. Ahmad Tehrani and Dr. Mohammad Mortazavi for their contribution during last year. As a member of the board, I will help the rest of the board members to acquire IRS 501 (C), Non-profit Organization for SIP and also to update/change bylaws to serve Iranian community in a broader aspect. With the help of officers and volunteers I am planning to achieve the following goals:
Once again, I would like to ask SIP members and friends to come and help us to achieve our goals and contribute to a stronger Iranian-American community in Northern California. And finally, I salute all the past presidents, board members and officers of SIP who played a role in its creation and continuation of a great service for Iranian community throughout more than two decades. I would like to specially thank Dr. Masoud Moghtaderi-Zadeh, SIP past president for his great contribution to SIP and Iranian community. Sincerely, Ex-president message Dear Members of SIP and Community: Wow! The year past so fast! It seems it was just a few months ago when SIP had its 1384 Nowruz celebration along with its 2005 Annual Election. But it was indeed April 1st of last year. Here is a SIP 2005-2006 Annual Report. On 2006 Annual ElectionSIP just had its 1385 Nowruz celebration and 2006 Annual Election on Friday April 7, 2006, when Membership of the society elected the new President, six Officers and a Board Director. Thus fulfilling one of my promises I made last year (May 2005 to be exact!) to timely hold the Annual SIP Election on April 7th 2006! I’ll come back to my other promises down below. The elected President is: I would like to sincerely congratulate all of them and welcome them to the challenging and yet fulfilling role of serving SIP and the Community. Some of these individuals have started to and some are continuing to serve SIP with their excellent volunteer work. Welcome aboard! We successfully held the SIP 2006 Annual Election on April 7, 2006. I hope to see this tradition continue on each and every First Friday of each April. On SIP Fundamentals & Democratic NatureThe Society of Iranian Professionals (SIP for short and also referred to as Anjoman) was established in 1982 in northern California. It was the first democratic non-profit, non-religious and non-political Iranian organization of its kind in the US. Next year it will be a quarter of century that the organization has been established. That is not a small feat! I have underlined the democratic nature of the organization, because in my opinion that has been its strongest character to survive and serve the community for so long. Many other organizations have appeared and disappeared throughout US during this interval. SIP democratic nature and membership elected Officers, President, and Board of Directors with the hard work of lots of people since 1982 have made this the oldest running organization of its kind in the US! Since its establishment, many other organizations throughout the world have been established following SIP model by others or sometimes by SIP Alumni! I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the individuals and organizations who have helped founding and operating SIP during these many years. On Challenges & Benefits of Volunteer WorkFor the most part SIP success is due to its volunteers work, and I have to tell you, however, that it is not an easy work! On the contrary, it is hard, stressful, no pay type of work, with its own headaches, weeknights and weekends long-hour discussions, and yes sometimes arguments, in addition to all the legwork! However, it is a fulfilling experience, a leaning process, a fun networking opportunity, and a chance for socializing with many good people from Membership, Guests, Sponsors, Speakers, Volunteers, Vendors, and other Organizations. It provides an opportunity to learn from wonderful speakers and to enjoy the events. So I would say it is indeed a privilege to serve SIP and the Community. I invite you and recommend to you to join this group of volunteers one way or another. On Participation!As we have said many times, the ultimate goal of SIP is to serve and make a Strong Successful Community. As they say the three most important characters of a good real estate property is location, location, and location! Similarly, the three most important of a Strong Successful Community are participation, participation and participation!!! To support SIP to achieve its ultimate goal we need your participation. You can participate by: Let me give you a real world example of what I mean by participation. I’ll do that by saying a little bit about SIP new President, Ms. Manijeh Hosseini. I shall let you know about her character via how I got to know her and how she became involved with SIP again. Last year sometimes around the beginning of my term she responded to our call for participation and renewed her SIP membership, but she did not get an on time acknowledgement letter or email regarding her membership renewal. She got annoyed, especially when she attended our programs and was asked if she were a member?! After she brought it to our attention again, hearing our apologies and reasons why it happened, she decided to become a volunteer again and help us improve our membership services! Again responding to our call for participation! She did such a wonderful job and became an important part of our group that we asked her to accept invitation to become an “appointed” Officer, which she did. Thus again she responded to our call for participation! Now she ran and was elected as the new President, responding again to our call for participation! These are all in addition to her previous long work and as an SIP member, volunteer, and Officer! On 2005-2006 Goals & ResultsI would like now to go over our goals we set to achieve and the results we got during 2005-2006. I should remind you that after the dot.com bust of the 2000-2002 and economical down turn, which affected SIP as well, and due to some other issues at SIP management level, SIP had a down turn in its activities to the extend that it reached to basically a complete stop during 9 months from May 2004 to January 2005! In September of 2004, Dr. Mohammad Mortazavi, the then President of SIP, made a call and invited the community to make an effort to stop SIP from closing its doors permanently. A group of volunteers, members of SIP and Community, responded to this call and started working hard and together to revive SIP. In February 2004 SIP had its first General Monthly Meeting after 9 months. And that followed by two more excellent programs in March & April of 2005, which ended in the election of new President, (5) Officers, and (3) Board Directors. The new Administration set a goal of continuing reviving SIP and starting reinventing it. On Friday April 7, 2006 the President gave an Annual Report (presented by Vice President and Acting President Ms. Sheila Mortazi). You can find a copy of that presentation on SIP website (http://www.anjoman.org). The following is a summary of the goals and results achieved: Starting with May 2005 to April of 2006, all General Monthly Meetings were successfully held typically on the First Friday of each Month (FFM). It was felt to revive SIP this was one of the most important goals to achieve. It gave a sense of regularity, consistency, and continuity to SIP again. Except for when the FEM fell on a Friday before a long weekend, all General Monthly Meetings was held on the First Friday of the Month at Sheraton Hotel FAZ Ballroom in Sunnyvale. The programs began with registration and networking typically at 6:30 pm with main presentations around 7:30 pm. Please see 2005-2006 Annual Report presentation on http://www.anjoman.org for the list of the programs and speakers. Upon the new Administration and Board taking office, one of the previous Board members resigned. I, then, made a promise to hold a midterm election to fill the vacant position. However, Board decided to postpone (actually eliminate) this midterm election to April 2006 Annual Election for (a) to avoid need for midterm Election again in future corresponding to the end of term of the elected Director, (b) to synchronize elections to only have one election per year, i.e., the First Friday of April of each year, and (c) to use the limited resources to revive SIP. The SIP Quarterly Board, Officers, and Members (BOM) meetings were revived and held on Friday, June 3rd, 2005, Friday, September 2nd, 2005, Friday, December 2nd, 2005, and Friday, April 7th, 2006. The meetings generally started with President giving a report of activities, followed by a report by Treasurer and a report by Board of Directors to Membership. The meetings had an extended period for questions and answers and time for Membership to provide feedbacks, comments, and constructive criticism. These meetings were and are overall useful for continued success of the society. We promised to look into reviving publishing (hard copy and/or soft copy) of SIP Newsletter. Due to limited resources and number of volunteers we did not achieve this goal. Instead we sent regular email announcements mostly on SIP programs to our Membership and Community. I personally think this is an important function, and in the near future with Membership support in terms of volunteer work SIP shall revive this important activity. We set a goal of increasing number of our members to 300! This goal proved to be difficult to achieve. Up to the night before 2006 Election we only had 116 Members! We need to analyze the data and review the challenge to remedy this situation. In addition to our 12 General Monthly Meetings, we held 12 Monthly Informal Gatherings, which are typically held around the 2nd or 3rd Wednesday of each month in a restaurant. There is no speaker, but opportunity to meet old friends, meet new ones, socialize, and do networking. I urge everyone to participate in these meetings. We held very well organized workshops typically held on Saturday and/or Sunday following our monthly programs. We organized a winter ski trip to Tahoe which was very well attended by the Membership and Community. We supported and promoted various Community organizations and individuals (e.g., The Earthquake Engineering and Education Institute (3eI), a City Council candidate, researchers, etc…). Our Saturday hiking continued in Rancho San Antonio, although the number of participants has been dropped! We supported various charity events including fundraising for Hurricane Katrina victims. We promised to leave SIP with healthy bank balance for the new Administration and we achieved that goal. In addition, we managed to pay all the past years past-due taxes, including taxes for 2002, 2003, and 2004 which included preparation fees, penalties and interests in addition to taxes. We also paid taxes for the 2005 which was our responsibility. We went ahead and paid the minimum tax requirement for 2006 which is due at the beginning of 2006. The 2006 taxes need to be finalized by October 2006. On “Who’ve done it?”We would not have achieved the above goals and results, without the support and participation of our Members and Guests. I thank you all for attending our programs and providing feedbacks. I would like to specially thank our wonderful Speakers for taking the time off of their busy schedule to come to our meetings - some traveling from far cities and states. I also would like to thank our Sponsors. Without their support it would have been difficult to achieve the above goals and results. I would like to specially thank the following individuals and organizations for their sponsorship: I would like this opportunity to thank FAZ Restaurant, its management, and personnel and DJ Alireza for their continued support and providing excellent service at special rates. Thanks are due to each and every one of our Officers, Volunteers, and Board Members for their hard work to make it happen. These include, (and I hope I have not forgotten one!): I specially would like to thank the Officers for their hard work and putting a lot of time and effort to achieve our goals. I would like to thank three individuals who have supported SIP in the past years, and specially with 2006 Election, namely Mr. Arash Zokaie, Ms. Rezvan Mogaddam, and Mr. Mehran Kamkar. Special thanks are due to two individuals: Ms. Sheila Mortazi and Mr. Ahmad Tehrani. As you may know four months into my term as SIP President, I was offered an opportunity to lead a group of engineers in Korea to help reduce socio-economic impacts of natural disasters, which after thinking for a while and consulting I accepted the challenge and relocated to Seoul. Upon discussions with the Board of my decision and intend to resign from SIP presidency, I was asked to stay on and continue my lead and support reviving SIP from afar with frequent visits to Bay Area when possible. I had already offered the position of Vice President, to Ms. Sheila Mortazi who graciously accepted the challenge. In addition, I asked her to take the burden of Acting President whenever I was out of country, which again she accepted the position. I, however, continued visiting Bay Area frequently and participating in person in Officers meetings, Board meetings, and General Monthly Meetings, whenever possible. In addition, I participated via telephone conference calls and use of email and internet technologies. Nevertheless, without active leadership and tremendous dedicated effort on the part of Ms. Mortazi, as VP and Acting President, we would not have achieved our goals and results, the way we did. I would like to thank her for all the good work she did. I would like to also thank Mr. Ahmad Tehrani, who not only as the member of Board of Directors performed his duty, additionally helped with day-to-day operations of SIP in my absent supporting the VP and Officers, whenever it was needed. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife, Elizabeth, who supported me throughout the past 18 months to support SIP. Specially, her support and understanding of when I left for a SIP meeting, when I had only a day or so in the Bay Area, is greatly appreciated. |
