LETTER FROM THE CEO
Reflections and Resolutions
HERE WE ARE IN 2023. MAN DOES TIME FLY WHEN you’re having fun. And 2022 was a fun year. What will 2023 hold for us? Well, I’m not sure yet, but I look forward to finding out. As I sat down to write this column, I was stuck on where to focus. Should I do a recap of 2022, or should I think about NALP’s New Year’s resolutions for 2023? I decided the way to go was to do a little of both.
In many ways, 2022 for
NALP was about one thing: ELEVATE. In all candor, NALP has been working on ELEVATE since 2019, when the deci- sion was made to break away from GIE and start having our annual meeting move around the country. But 2022 was the year when it all came together, so it really was our focus for the year. And, by all accounts, ELEVATE was a huge success and demonstrates that NALP is more than capable of hosting a top-flight annual meeting on its own.
2022 was also about success in other areas. NALP launched Voice for Healthy Green Spaces, our new digital advocacy program designed to help us expand our political outreach. As of November
2022, we have nearly 5,000 industry professionals signed up, with more and more joining every day. We also made great progress on H-2B when the administration approved the release of all of the H-2B visas allowed by current law. Even beyond that, we made progress in getting the unions to the table to work on a permanent solution for H-2B. While we have yet to quite get to that permanent solution, the progress was real. And speaking of real, we were able to defeat 20 out of 20 negative pesticide bills in the states. While ELEVATE and our government relations were the highlights of the year, we also added more new contractor members to the membership. In fact, since 2019, NALP has increased the number of contractor members by over 30 percent. So, what does 2023 have in store? Actually, quite a bit. Early in 2023, you will see NALP publish an industry position on sustainability. We are doing this so we can take the lead on this critical issue and stop having people outside our industry define sustainability for us. We will also be sharing recommen- dations with all of our contrac- tor members on how they can implement more sustainable practices and how they can help educate their customers on how our industry’s sustain- able practices benefit them and the planet.
2023 will also see NALP introduce some new member benefits that we believe our
6 The Edge //January/February 2023
members will find great value. Beyond more new benefits, the staff and I plan to visit more members and our state association partners. As a team, we learn so much when we have the opportunity to visit our members where they work and live. It helps us identify opportu- nities for new benefits that we can provide our members. We will also use 2023 to keep building on the success we have had over the past three years, including continu- ing our work on DEI, led by the efforts of our DEI council. We will also be introducing a new network for veterans that will complement our current networks for women, Hispanics and young professionals. Finally, we will have the second iteration of ELEVATE in the great city of Dallas, where we will build off the success of 2022 to bring an even better event to this great industry. Let me finish by saying thank you to all of our members, you all are the best I have ever worked with and I look forward to working with, visiting with, lobbying with and learning from you.
BRITT WOOD
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