GBA First Word - February 2026
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Joel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the first word. It's February and I always enjoy when the first of the month falls on a weekend so I can share with you what I do when I'm not working. Uh, wanna make sure that everyone knows that in January we send a customized engagement report to every one of our members. We do this so that you can measure your involvement in GBA.

By the number of people in our database, the number of downloads and other metrics that will help you to gauge the return on investment of your membership. If you haven't seen it, please check with your ambassador, and if you don't know who your ambassador is, please let us know. I also wanna welcome Nikki Scalia, who just joined the GBA team.

Nikki's a geoprofessional, a geotechnical engineer by background, and she's joined us to help us [00:01:00] to grow our membership and she's had some great success. Having Nikki is a great resource because she understands consulting and the benefits of being a member. And thanks to those of you that are, uh, identifying potential members to join GBA.

We've had some great success already. So welcome Nikki to the team.

Okay, members, there's three things to look forward to in February. First of all, uh, we, we will be taking applications for the Ascent class. That's part of our career continuum, and it's intended for those that have a few years of consulting service and are now starting to [00:02:00] manage projects, people and clients.

So look for the, uh, applications for the Ascent program. That first class will be starting in April. Also we will be launching chat GBA in February. That's our own chat bot. That'll be available for members only. It'll access Gbas vast library of resources to, uh, help you to manage risk, optimize performance, and to develop leaders in your company.

And lastly. Please we're less than two months away from our annual conference. It's gonna be incredible event in Phoenix, Arizona. So please register for the annual conference. We look forward to seeing you in Phoenix, Arizona. And this concludes the first word. Appreciate you, Lou, watching and listening, and please pass it on to somebody else in your company that might like to see the benefits, like to hear about the benefits of being a GBA member.

Thanks a [00:03:00] lot.