Greetings fellow CIRI members,

As 2015 winds down, we have an opportunity to reflect on the past year and acknowledge what went well, what didn’t, and what we might do differently next year.

For CIRI, 2015 presented challenges and also opportunities. We faced difficult market conditions, but continued to deliver timely and relevant professional development programs aimed at helping you excel at your job. We also continued to build our advocacy efforts, responding to IR-related proposals and briefing our members on the hot topics impacting the IR profession in Canada.

December brings membership renewal and I would urge all of our members to renew now to avoid having your membership lapse. Now more than ever, your CIRI membership allows you to stay current and informed.

Given the market challenges facing many of our members' organizations, your Board of Directors recently embarked on a strategic planning exercise to ensure we continue to meet our members' needs. The process is designed to develop a vision of where we want CIRI to be in 2018. Over two days in Toronto in November, we took the first steps that will guide us through this process. The Board’s mandate now is to further define a set of broad goals and develop plans to achieve them over the next three years. We are reconvening at our next in-person meeting in Toronto in April to complete this process. Stay tuned for more on this important initiative.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our members coast-to-coast a warm, safe and happy holiday season with friends and family.

As always, I welcome your comments, questions and feedback on anything CIRI related. I can be reached at mbrown@edrsilver.com or by phone at (604) 640-4804.