National Capital Chapter Members,

I am honored and excited that our membership has elected me to help guide our chapter over the next year. I know the past few years have been challenging to transition back to in person events, but I have faith that engagement will continue to climb back to a peak of prior years.

We have certainly seen a change coming out of the events of the past few years, and a shift in our membership’s order of priorities – people are more engaged than ever with various industrial societies and social groups and our strong youthful leadership of past years has developed to the point of having more responsibilities at work and in their personal lives. I, myself, fall into this category, and because of that I’m happy to announce a significant change to our approach this year for monthly chapter meetings. We have taken lessons from the COVID years, and all PES sessions this year will be scheduled during lunch hours and run virtually to encourage member participation. Happy hours and Dinner sessions will still be held in person the evening following the PES, but at a new venue – Rhodeside Grill in Arlington, VA. As another added benefit we will be issuing CEU/PDH’s for attendees at BOTH PES and Dinner presentations.

I would like to remind everyone of the importance that we, as membership in one of the most well known and influential HVAC societies, hold in the future of our industry. The technical guidance ASHRAE provides in form of Standards and guidelines is referenced every day in our careers and continues to be the “standard of care” in the industry. Diversity, equity and how to continue to support, grow and develop leaders in HVAC has become a focus of our membership and society. Most recently, ASHRAE is taking on climate change with our Society President Ginger Scroggins’ theme and bringing Decarbonization to the forefront with a National Conference being held in our backyard of Washington, D.C. this October.

Without members like you, ASHRAE Society cannot evolve with our industry’s rapid developments. We are very lucky to have such a large membership base locally, and within that base, a large amount of diverse and youthful members. My focus as your President this year will be to engage with these members and help show the benefits of involvement in our Chapter – whether it be attending a social event with YEA or a panel discussion with WiA. I really believe our Chapter will thrive with engaged members and dynamic programming, as it has in years past.

I hope you are as encouraged and excited as I am to get this year kicked off!

Mike Morder

President

ASHRAE National Capital Chapter