NAAHP Blog

The “fabulous Ms. Paul,” as I call Myriam, is pursuing personal and professional opportunities after her obtaining a graduate degree last month. This is as good an opportunity as any to give you a glimpse into the inner workings of our newsletter team, in particular, and of NAAHP at large.

Since NAAHP staff are geographically distributed, Myriam and I first met face-to-face at last year’s conference. She was tirelessly attending to issues for participants and sponsors alike. She is among the core staff and ad hoc volunteers who appear in this video from the volunteer room. After the conference, she helped craft the vast majority of correspondence to partners and sponsors.

Myriam is all about execution, whether it is for a task that is delegated to her, or whether she is at the helm, as the leader of an initiative. As such, her operational plan dovetailed quite well with the strategic plan that I lead, and which will be presented at the conference later this year. She single-handedly created the employee handbook and the onboarding process for new staff.

Regardless of what team she worked with, she led by example, and cared for the well-being of the team. Myriam cares about people in a demonstrative way, and checked on everyone to make sure they have the support or resources they needed. She would call just to say hello. She would send emails to acknowledge the work that each person was doing.

It has been a privilege for me to contribute to the ongoing growth of the newsletter since Myriam invited me to collaborate, beginning in its second issue. The team worked together to come up with the themes for our content. Then I established the structure for individual roles and responsibilities on the newsletter staff, based on how each person wanted to contribute to the team.

Myriam and I leveraged each other’s strengths as co-leaders of the newsletter. She took on most the operational responsibilities, and that left me free to concentrate on bringing up the other side up to par: polishing content, choosing visuals, including for the banner that Vlad creates, finding guest writers, etc. Meanwhile, the other contributors on the staff rotate on providing content as well, and we all collaborate on how to refine our process.

As Myriam moves ahead to a new chapter in her life, her presence is still felt in the previous chapters. The rest of the team and I will continue to write future chapters, and invite you to participate.

The Fabulous Ms. Paul