Dear friends and colleagues,

I hope this finds all of you, your friends, families and others you hold dear, safe and well.  I realize that’s a tall order these days. In times like these, I, and I know many of us, find solace in our work and professional communities. Toward that end, I think you’ll find that this issue of our always interesting newsletter is extra packed. And although perhaps I need no excuse, I’m going to take this opportunity to give a public thank you to Matt Aibel (USA), our talented and hardworking newsletter editor, for a particularly stellar job – overall, but perhaps in this issue especially. I know how hard he works on this project, and how much extra effort and creativity went in to curating the section on Philip Bromberg, which I hope that you, too, will find enlightening and very moving. Matt and the other contributors to this tribute really capture something central both about Philip, and about others in relation to Philip, as you will see. Thank you, Matt, who follows in the footsteps of Christina Emanuel (USA) and Maria Tammone (Italy) and our other talented and dedicated newsletter editors.

In Tony Bass’s (USA) report on Membership Committee activities, you will learn about an exciting, upcoming symposium. You’ll note that, along with our November colloquium and calendar of webinars, we are bringing you as much online content as possible these days.

While most of us are on “screen overload” from doing remote work, many of us continue to be hungry for additional learning opportunities and chances to connect with colleagues, even if not yet in person. As for this latter possibility, as of this writing, we are still hoping to be able to gather together in Los Angeles next June for our conference. We understand, of course, that this might not be possible, and we will be reevaluating the continued feasibility of this in the fall and early winter.

Now that our Board has met twice with the newly elected members, I want to offer an official congratulations and welcome to Maria Eugenia Boetsch (Chile), Christina Emanuel (USA), Shlomit Gadot (Israel) and Sandra Toribio Caballero (Spain). We are excited and grateful to have them with us. We hope that those of you who also ran for election or just considered doing so will continue to serve on IARPP committees and/or work with the organization in other ways. We also hope that you will consider running in future elections. We welcome and even need all of your voices.

Before closing, I want to update you on a few important committee appointments. Sandra Toribio Caballero is now the Board liaison to the Candidates Committee, taking over from Committee founder and longtime Board liaison Margaret Black (USA). The committee is newly co-chaired by Fabia Banella (Italy) and Erik Fagerberg (Sweden) and plans the popular yearly Candidates Webinar, the Candidates panel at our conferences, and other candidate-related activities. We define an IARPP candidate as someone who is either still in postgraduate training, or up to 5 years after graduation from training. Hilary Offman (Canada) has started and chairs a new committee, International Membership Outreach. She will work closely with Tony Bass who, in addition to serving on the Executive Committee as our Treasurer, also chairs our Membership Committee, working to help develop and improve the activities and services we offer to our members. Hilary and her committee will be responsible for helping to educate colleagues about our organization in parts of the world that are not yet familiar with IARPP. As mentioned, we will hear from Tony in this issue and from Hilary and other committee chairs in future issues of the newsletter.

As always, please be in touch with me with any questions, comments, or related concerns.

Sending my warm wishes for health and safety in the days ahead.

Steve Kuchuck
IARPP President

Steven Kuchuck, DSW
New York City
Email Steve Kuchuck