Best wishes to you and your families for a healthy and happy 2023! I am honored to be elected as Chair of the IEEE Long Island Section for 2023 and am excited to be joined by James Martino as the First Vice Chair, Udit Sharma as the Secretary and Santo Mazzola as the Treasurer. Together as a team we look forward to providing new and exciting opportunities to build and expand on the successes of our Section.

But first, I would like to thank our outgoing Chair, Arnie Stillman for his tireless work and service to the Section during the “pandemic” years. I am grateful for his leadership, perservance and concern for maintaining the wellbeing of the section during uncertainty.

I would also like to thank our executive committee members for all of the efforts and contributions they’ve made and continue to make for our Section. I am grateful to those who will not be continuing in their roles and pleased to welcome the new Chairs, Vice Chairs and volunteers, welcome aboard!

For those who may not know me, I would like to share that I am originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I obtained my Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Shortly after graduating I moved to Long Island to begin my career at then Symbol Technologies. While at Symbol, I obtained my MS degree from NYU Tandon School of Engineering. I have spent my professional career at Symbol which was acquired by Motorola, then subsequently acquired by Zebra Technologies. I am currently a technical escalation project manager for Zebra’s Software as a Service (SaaS) organization. I have been Vice Chair of the Signal Processing Society and Chair of the Young Professionals Affinity Group. Most recently, I have served as Section Vice Chair as well as Secretary.

As your 2023 Chair, I would like for the membership to consider my Four Point Strategic Plan to expand the Section by requesting that everyone get connected and get involved:

1. We have a significant number of society, affinity groups and committees that have been inactive for quite some time. Inactivity puts our Section at risk of IEEE.org requesting to dissolve those entities. I ask that you work to re-energize your society, affinity group or committee to ensure we receive the rebates.
2. Unfortunately, membership continues to decline. Therefore I would like to see more members become involved with our efforts to recruit new members, while retaining existing members. I am committed to leveraging my role as Chair to draft from the pool of engineers at Zebra Technologies.
3. I implore all members, if you have not yet done so, to consider participating in the Volunteer Leadership Training (VoLT) Program. Volunteer Leadership Training (VoLT) Program prepares IEEE volunteers for leadership roles in their local sections and beyond. I completed my VoLT training in 2019 and still rely on that experience to assist in all of my endeavors.
4. Now that we have returned to in-person gatherings, I urge you to attend all upcoming social and networking gatherings hosted by James Colotti or any events that we may have during the summer. Your presence as a Section member helps us with our recruitment efforts to transition guests into members.

I am looking forward to having an effective year with all of your participation and support. Please stay engaged by getting connected and getting involved.

Warm Regards,
Rhonda Green
2023 IEEE Long Island Section Chair