Message from New York Chapter President

Seasons Greetings!

I want to personally and humbly thank everyone for a wonderful and exciting year. As President of the BDPA New York Chapter, I have the opportunity to meet and work with a diverse group of phenomenal volunteers from a variety of industries and who all have one thing in common: A passion for giving back and building our future global technologists and for promoting diversity within Information Technology.

Thanks to your wonderful support, our organization was able to stand by our 2009 theme, "Dare 2 Share" and come together to sharpen the technical minds of our key stakeholders. Thanks to our BDPA New York Executive Board Members, our many accomplishments for 2009 include:

• Our HSCC team came in 5th place at the 2009 NBDPA Conference
• Our HSCC team placed 2nd at the Regional HSCC Competition at Bowie State University
• Our SITES youth 2nd placed 2nd in the IT Showcase at the BDPA Regional Conference
• Our students also attended the Teragrid Computer Conference in Arlington, VA
• Two BDPA student members worked at UBS corporate offices in Stamford, CT
  as summer interns
• Our monthly program meetings featured excellent presentations on topics such as Web Analytics, Unix, A Very Long Love Affair, Social Networking, Trends in Web
  2.0 and Cloud Computing
• Membership drives, including events such as our BDPA New York chapter Meet-n-Greet, Sing, Harlem, Sing theatre outing, and Book Signing featuring two local authors
• Submission of our 2008 Chapter of the Year book to National BDPA headquarters
• Our newsletter, Humanware, was published four times this year.
• We partnered with other nonprofit organizations to participate in events such as No Limit Career Day and Sisterhood: United we Inspire
• A wonderful Scholarship & Recognition Awards Ceremony, in June, thanks to our corporate sponsor UBS

We are already planning for an exciting 2010! BDPA is a volunteer-based organization and we are always looking for members who want take an active role and have a desire to give back. In the words of Mary McLeod Bethune "Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough." If you want to be a part of something great ... Now is the Time, the Momentum is Here, BDPA is the Conduit.

Sincerely,
Judaea Yarde Lane, President
BDPA New York Chapter