What will you bring to the role of President Elect?

I'm honoured that the Nominations Committee after considering the high calibre nominees for the position of Pres Elect have chosen me.

I am thrilled to be able to continue my gift of service as part of the leadership team this committee has designed as the 2008 ICF Board. The individuals on this Board bring a mix of skills and wide demographic representation for our membership.

I value learning, loyalty, leadership (and a laugh!) and I will bring all of these to the service of ICF as President Elect.

I will continue to enjoy the collaboration of working as part of the ICF leadership team and will bring my experience, skills and passion to support Diane Brennan in the role of President throughout 2008. I see next year as an important time to build and consolidate strong global relationships and alliances to allow us to achieve all we are capable of.

I have extensive experience in organisational development both within ICF and more broadly in my business. I have local, Regional and Global Leadership experience and have been part of a number of Global Taskforces and committees. As a director I have been Board liaison with the Regulatory Committee, which gave me insight into the challenges and need for maintaining networks of intelligence to explore regulatory issues members may face globally.

As current ICF Treasurer I chair the Finance Committee. The ICF is on a firm financial footing and this year I have had the opportunity to lead a global team in bringing innovation and creativity to the task of designing a number of non-dues revenue streams for the ICF. We are designing ways to reach out to customers and consumers of coaching services, forge Strategic Alliances and find broad opportunities to achieve our strategic objectives whilst growing our financial well-being. This will allow us to increase value for all stakeholders whilst increasing ICF revenue for future initiatives - al without imposing any financial burden on our members.

What is your Vision for the future of ICF and coaching?

It is an exciting time for the ICF - the past 18months have been a time of consolidation and now it is time to move forward. The Board has used a Knowledge-Based approach to design a Strategic Plan that enables ICF to achieve what members across the globe believe is most important in building their businesses and our profession. For the current year, the Board has identified three areas of particular focus:

• Marketing to increase the competitive brand advantage of the ICF credential
• Providing increased business development, promotional, educational and networking opportunities for members, and
• Research focused on highlighting the coaching impact delivered by ICF credentialed coaches.

We are embarking on our other major initiative - working closely with Regions to implement our new Organisational Structure, which incorporates a number of Regional Service Centres for members.

This solid framework puts us in a position to inspire and align people around something bigger than ICF as it is today. I see we have the opportunity to grow ICF (not just in terms of member numbers) but in the terms of increased positive impact it can have in the world. We have the ICF Foundation as a vehicle to use for this purpose.

What do you see as the opportunities for expanding the positive impact of the ICF

I was one of the representatives of ICF in Beijing at the China Coaches Association conference. We attended the official conference dinner along with community and business leaders, and Government officials. In this way people of influence in business and government were able to see the power of aligning coaching with, in this case, the important task of building commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility.

There are many such opportunities ahead for ICF to work strategically with shapers of the human condition and move us closer to our long-term vision of making coaching an integral part of society.