Dear corporate member,

At the corporate member meeting at the conference on October 12th, 2007, many participants gave wonderful suggestions. One of them was for corporate members to have a forum to communicate with each other.

Please consider joining a future conference meeting. To join please contact Marzena Laslie at imiaml@aol.com for the conference call access code. These meetings are for current corporate members only.

Meetings are always held via conference call on the last Tuesday of the month every other month at 10am PST / 12pm Central / 1pm EST.

Next Scheduled Meetings

September 30, 2008

November 25, 2008




January 29 Summary
Present: Aida Cases, Cross Cultural Communication Inc; Bruce Merley, Pacific Interpreters; Oscar Arocha, Boston Medical Center; Bill Prezno, Cyracom; Rebecca Sky, Foundation for Healthy Communities, Erika Manning & Carlos Pava, Voices for Health.

Discussion surrounded how to enhance the corporate directory to include a descriptor of a few lines so that viewers can see quickly what the organization is all about. We also mentioned including city and state, and the ability to see the directory by categories and state, having the alphabetical listing as the default. Regarding the objectives of the corporate division meetings, most agreed that bringing corporate members together to promote the field is the primary goal and to 'broaden our networks'. There was mention of the importance of being informed of burning issues on people's minds and on what is happening on a local, state, national and even international level. Bimonthly meetings were preferred to monthly ones, so that the focus is not on the meetings themselves but on how they can instigate networking and discussion off line. Corporate meetings should not be hospital focused or PR forums. Members would also like to see the IMIA also bring issues to the table to foster further collaboration between corporate members and individual ones. When asked about what corporate members can contribute, TIME seemed to be a big response, as well as connection to particular groups, like providers, for example. One stated that participants could benefit from sharing resources with each other. Another suggestion was to have the next face to face corporate annual meeting in the evening with dinner served, so it does not conflict with workshops. Corporate members on the call decided to send a collective corporate message out to all inviting contact.

Note: A moderator and note-taker would be appreciated for the next call. Perhaps each meeting could have a different moderator who would also present some topics. Please email iarocha@challiance.org if interested in helping further develop the IMIA Corporate Division.