Friday update from Chris!

Hello, fabulous math team. Happy Friday. I'm pleased to report that we had our board meeting earlier this week and it was a great conversation. We welcomed three new board members, community members. One is Mahadi Worsama, who is the CEO of the Somali Parent Autism Network. We also welcomed Jen Shadowins, who used to work, she's a brand strategist at Zeus Jones and now she works independently. And then our third person that we welcomed was Sariya Angamuthu, whose daughter Mitra did a project at our Eagan office in middle school and she won a whole bunch of awards.

But her connection as well as her father's is that her mother, Sariya's, let's say sister in law, is autistic. And so they are passionate about the work. And so anyway, it's just delightful to be able to add these three board members to an already talented board. And so we had an opportunity at the board meeting to walk through the progress that we're making. And what we talked about was really shifting from, excuse me, a period of fight or flight coming out of the pandemic, the change healthcare debacle, just all of the challenges over the last years that you all have worked through together to this idea of focus and flourish.

And so our focus for the meeting was three areas. So we talked about wanting to be the employer of choice and how we did an employee engagement survey. And what we heard from the team at the enterprise level is that we need to improve our benefits, which the HR team is working on, as well as looking at compensation. And we're proposing to move to merit based compensation in the fall. And the third was leadership presence and communication and Cadre. These Friday videos is one of the ways that we're looking to improve on that as well as many others.

So we've talked about the employee engagement survey, what we heard from you, what we're doing, as well as some other tactics that Jessica is working on, like our fund committee that she's sponsoring and our relaunch of our DE&I committee, which we're really excited about. And a shout out to Pride this coming weekend in Minneapolis. Let's go. First topic was be the employer of choice. The second one was this notion of rather than expanding geographically this year, we wanted to really tighten up our core operating model and just improve our foundation of how we operate in our centers today.

That's a multitude of things that we're working on there, collectively led by Andrea that she talked through through. And then our third and kind of bridge from the second to the third was this notion of the wait list that we have today where we have over 400 families who could benefit from what we do. And so what we talked about is this concept introducing of support now. So with our mental health professionals, as we kind of move into this new era together, we have an opportunity when people reach out to do a visit with them right away and get to know them, understand what their needs are.

Because as we're learning, sometimes people don't need center based services. Instead they need more of like an ABA light version or psychotherapy family support services, those types of things. So anyway, Leslie talked about that, which is still a prototype, meaning and it, it had big letters on it that said under development, we're looking to prototype or pilot that in our Minnetonka office. And then as we continue to iterate and work out any kinks, then we'll be able to bring that more broadly to the organization.

So it was an exciting board meeting. Those were our three primary focus areas. And then our committees all reported out. We have a quality committee and so we had a report out on the work that's going on there. Our foundation, our new foundation board reported and they talked about Shine for Mac, which is our peer to peer fundraiser which is launching Monday. So look for more from us on Monday on Cadre and other spots so we can all engage in this community celebration. So it's going to be a really fun summer as we focus on this together.

So that was the foundation board update. We also heard from our Strategic Visions committee, we're working on our next three to five year plan. So we have our enterprise goals this year, smart goals to bridge our former strategic plan which again was around geographic expansion to our next strategic plan which will include us continuing into the new services space. So starting with the SupportNow model. So strategic Visions gave an update on that and then we ended with our finance committee and based on all of the other things that we talked about our first two months into the year, we are in a positive financial position vis a vis our budget, which is a good place for us to be.

So again, focus and flourish was the theme of the meeting. And we also talked about our new values, progress and joy being two of the ones that really are two of our newer ones. And we're excited to feature as well. And actually at the meeting we did a video highlighting the many ways that you all have been spreading spreading joy throughout Mac. So that was our mission moment. That was part of the meeting as well. So a little bit of a longer update today, but that was our board meeting this week.

I thought it was important for you to hear that. Then we had a senior leadership team meeting where each of the, or not all of the senior leaders, but we kind of agreed and organized so that represented all the areas of the organization presented on their action plans related to the employee engagement survey. So we have the enterprise level action plan that each senior leader has an action plan. So look for them to. They've been having conversations with many of the team, many of us different team members.

And then you'll hear them communicating their progress on those as well. Excuse me. We'll also touch on that. Pardon me. At the next town hall meeting as well. So you can see that. So we're clear around here's what we said we were going to do. Here's what we've done. Here's still what we're working on. And again with that theme of progress. With that, I know we're going into the 4th of July next week, and I'm hopeful. I know many of you are taking pto, which is fabulous. And for those of you who are here working, thank you for doing that, too, so we can continue to support and serve our families.

Have a wonderful, happy, safe Fourth of July. And we will not have a video next week, but we'll be back the following week. All right. Take good care.