ALL OHIO PETS 2024 INSPIRES

The annual All Ohio President Elects Training Seminar (PETS) occurred on Mar 15 and 16 at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Columbus. Our All Ohio PETS is considered a model for multi district PETS, and we have had the honor to host the Incoming Rotary International President as an evening speaker and commissioning officer for our Ohio incoming Club Presidents for several years. This year it was our privilege to host Rotary International President Elect Stephanie Urchick. RIPE Stephanie discussed her goals - membership development, local peacebuilding and continuity of leadership. She inspired and motivated us all with her speech on Friday evening. In addition, RIPE Stephanie was able to stay with us until after lunch on Friday, enabling many President-elects, Rotarians and district leaders to meet with her. She took part in one of the learning sessions and made some notes of her own to share.

Although we always have great energizing speakers, the real highlight of the session are the four learning sessions (Innovate, Collaborate, Engage and Inspire) where our facilitators lead discussions with groups of President-Elects. Our predecessors have shown us that the best ideas are in those seated around the table, not in a PowerPoint. In our district meetings after these four sessions, these interactive learning sessions again were received very positively. As an observer of our Presidents Elect through the weekend, I could clearly see the energy and excitement to lead develop in the eyes of our incoming Presidents. You have a great team of club leaders coming!!!

An interesting behind the scenes story - last fall, Jason Brown, our morning session speaker, asked us what we wanted him to talk about. We suggested "how do we make Rotary Irresistible?" Jasion mentally wrote the speech while driving from a North Carolina PETS evening speaking event to All Ohio PETS the night of March 15. He delivered it at 9 AM March 16. It was an energetic, fun, thought-provoking and informative speech that had absolutely no indication that Jason was delivering it for the first time with no rehearsal.

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