Dear Colleagues:

The holiday season is upon us. 2007 is drawing to a close and our chapter year is at the halfway point. It is hard to believe. I am halfway through my term as President and I want to thank the Chapter Board of Governors, officers and committee volunteers for their tremendous support. A special thanks to Diane Napolitano and Brian Mannix. As some of you may know, our Vice President for Professional Services, Kedrick Carr, took a position with his firm in London . Diane volunteered to step up mid year and keep these vital services going strong. Brian Mannix, who was working with Diane, volunteered to step into the Secretary's role for the rest of the chapter year. Even with these shifts in leadership, our achievements at mid year have been outstanding. We have conducted four full day workshops, conducted three Audit director roundtables, hosted a Women's networking event, spoke at two student events about the Internal Audit profession, provided training and hosted the CIA examination and coordinated one social event. Thank you for your support and we will count on you in 2008.

Now on to our recent events and details of some upcoming events.

• On December 7th, Sandra J. Miller lead us in a workshop on handling “Conflict and Confrontation”. These soft skills are so important in today's competitive environment. Our luncheon speaker, Carmela Cannavo from Robert Half, discussed Changing Workforce Dynamics: Hiring and Compensation Outlook. We found the discussion of motivating and appealing to the various generations enlightening.
• Our January workshop and luncheon are scheduled for January 11, 2008 . This will be a joint meeting with our colleagues from the Long Island chapter. Our workshop will be conducted by Anne Simmons from Board Advisory Services, Inc. Anne will train us in How to Gain Insight and Respond to Unpredictable Risk.
• Our luncheon speaker on January 11 will be Joseph Reo III from MetLife who will speak to us about Acquisition – Post Sarbanes Oxley.
• And don't forget to mark you calendar for our annual audit seminar on March 28th, 2008. As in past years, we will have general sessions followed by multi-track sessions. Tracks include Financial/Operational, Fraud, and Information Technology. In addition, two 1/2 hour segments will be dedicated specifically to vendors, providing participants an opportunity to visit exhibits. Our featured keynote luncheon speaker will be Stephen M. R. Covey, CEO of CoveyLink, - which is a learning and consulting practice focused on enabling leaders and organizations to increase and leverage trust to achieve superior performance. It is never too early to register as this event sold out for the past two years

I look forward to greeting you at these upcoming events.

Tracy Wych, President
IIA New York Chapter