As we enter the month of March, spring is in the air, and there is so much excitement! There is so much to celebrate and look forward to at AMA Toronto.
March opened with the inspiration from our Jury Day on February 28th for Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends where I got to spend my Sunday in conversation with the incredible marketing leaders and members of our jury, and of course to top it off with the Golden Globes! We can’t wait to announce our 2021 Legends and Marketer on the Rise in early April! So many amazing, inspirational, stories to tell – empowering marketing leadership!
So what else is in store? At the beginning of March I moderated two sessions at the DX3 conference; we are hosting our next Legendary Leadership event on Daring to Break Conventions on March 10 with CMHOL Legends Arthur Fleischmann and Nancy Marcus; we are holding a special Diversity and Inclusion open forum for the marketing community on March 24th and we top it all off with the Battle of the CMOs at our MNG event at the end of the month. Mentorship is always on the agenda at AMA Toronto, and for marketers at the early stages of their careers, applications for the 4th year of our Career Accelerator program close soon.
International Women’s Day on March 8 is a wonderful time to celebrate the trailblazers in our industry, and we are thrilled to have 2020 CMHOL Legend inductee Nancy Marcus share her perspectives and passion for leadership through diversity and inclusion, having broken a few glass ceilings in her career. It’s also a time to reflect on our own accomplishments. As an organization, our board of directors is a diverse group and we are proud of the commitment and involvement of such an amazing group of senior marketing leaders, 60 percent of whom are female — including our past president, me and our president-elect. In addition, 33% of AMA Toronto’s Advisory Council is represented by senior female leaders and while we still have a ways to go in recognizing female leadership in our Marketing Hall of Legends (less than 20%), our 2021 jury is comprised equally of women and men – ensuring representation and inclusion in our selection process. Furthermore, our broader outreach resulted in record nominations which ensured diversity happens organically in selecting our new legends and Marketer on the Rise, and I can’t wait to celebrate that when we announce them later this month.
As we continue our focus on diversity, we very much look forward to our open forum on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to hear from and interact directly with you on March 24th. Your participation, insight and feedback help us advance our commitment and shape our DEI strategy going forward.
And as we finally turn to spring, in addition to the warmer weather, I am also super excited about our new collaboration with the Canadian Marketing Association – stay tuned for more on that. We are also looking at a number of additional initiatives that I can’t wait to share with you soon.
Onwards and upwards,
Miglena
