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Message from the President

Dear East Bay CAMFT Community,

I hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves amid the pandemic. As you all know, everyone in the Bay Area must “shelter in place” to curb the transmission of COVID-19, therefore all of our upcoming in-person events have been canceled or postponed until further notice. This includes all Board of Directors meetings, which will be held by Zoom until it’s safe to have them in person again. If you would like to attend a meeting, let us know and we can give you instructions on how to join us. I am happy to see that some of the networking luncheons will continue as video conferences. I appreciate that our community is still making efforts to stay connected and I encourage everyone to reach out to colleagues for support and encouragement. The E-tree is always a great source of information and way to stay connected. Lately, there have been numerous helpful posts by chapter members discussing how to manage a myriad of concerns and complications that we are presently encountering as clinicians. If you haven’t had a chance to check the E-tree in a while, this would be an excellent time to do so. It’s a wonderful example of how our community comes together to support one another. Click this LINK for directions to subscribe to the E-tree.

CAMFT has also written a letter to members with a list of resources related to COVID-19, as well as a Q&A regarding use of Tele-health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read it HERE.

Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Board of Directors had started working on multiple projects for our chapter. In January, we held our first member luncheon with guest speaker, Nabil El-Ghoroury, Executive Director of CAMFT. We also held the board’s Annual Retreat to welcome our new board members, conduct our first board meeting and initiate planning efforts for the year. During the retreat, I was voted in as the 2020 President, due to the previously elected President’s inability to continue with the board. In February, we attended the CAMFT Chapter Leadership Conference in Burlingame, where the East Bay CAMFT Chapter received the award for Best Chapter Management and Tu Hoang received an award for Outstanding Chapter Leader for going above and beyond the call of duty of her job. We left the conference with new ideas and inspiration for events, trainings and recruitment. We hope that some of these ideas will come to fruition by the end of the year. For now, in response to the pandemic, we are going to pivot and start working on plans to provide online resources, virtual meetings and webinars.

I’d like to introduce the 2020 Board Members:

Beth Hermosillo - President

Susan Kelsey Weissenborn - Past President

Tu Hoang - Treasurer

Aliss Wang - Program Director/ Speakers

Marie Whelan - Marketing/Social Media

John Kravitz - Member-at-Large

Jessica Brown - Member-at-Large

Nanci Finley - Member-at-large

We are still in need of a Secretary (this position requires a licensed MFT), Hospitality Director, Pre-licensed Associate Director, Student Director and Membership Director. If you have any interest in serving the East Bay therapist community by serving on the Board of Directors, please let me know as soon as possible.

Let’s remember to be kind to ourselves and make time for self-care each day. Take good care and stay healthy!

Warm wishes,

Beth Hermosillo, LMFT

President, East Bay CAMFT