EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S


Tony Campisi | Chapter Executive Director tony@cai-padelval.org


REPORT There’s no doubt we live in unique times.


Growing up, I remember people my parent’s age referring back to pivotal moments in time for my parent’s generation.


The assassination of JFK. Vietnam. Watergate.


For me, as an 80’s kid, my historic moments were the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, the Fall of the Berlin Wall and, later, 9/11.


By the time Communism, and the towers, fell, I had concluded my generation was living through an immensely historic moment in time.


But the history didn’t stop. Afghanistan. Iraq. The election of the nation’s first African American president. The storming of the Capitol by insurrectionists on January 6. Surely no generation had experienced this many big moments in history.


And then there’s the big one. A once-a-century global pandemic that has upended daily life and presented us with a new / next normal.


Is this it? Or is there something else coming?


For me, I feel like we are at a watershed moment. A fork in the road that presents us with two paths – the way things used to be, pre-Covid-19 (predictable, acceptable enough) and a new path that offers us the option of building on what used to be in a way that is better, and more than acceptable enough.


It’s like we’ve been given an opportunity to look back on our lives and decide if the old way was good enough, or a course-correction is warranted.


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Before I get too far down Robert Frost’s proverbial “two roads diverged,” let me get back to the practical. Our chapter recently hosted our first in-person, indoor annual conference in over two years. The event felt different, mostly because of the more than 24 months that lapsed between the last event and this year’s, and the unique circumstances under which it took place. But the structure, the guts of the event, were mostly the same.


Most people who attended will tell you the event was good, mostly because they wanted to see people in-person again and reconnect with colleagues they had only seen via a screen for more than 15 months.


I will tell you the event was just good enough, but, yes, a course correction is warranted.


Winston Churchill once said “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Our chapter is emerging from the Covid crisis in pretty good shape, but that doesn’t mean everything we do is still good or good enough. That’s why the board and staff and committees will be engaging over the next 4-6 months in an evaluation of all that we do and determining what our future should look like. You can be sure there will be changes, but not for change’s sake. The world around us has significantly changed. We can’t stand still amidst the swirl. We can’t just go back to the way it used to be. That’s not good enough.


This is our opportunity to write the next chapter. Its sort of like History of the World, but Part 2. And we’re the ones writing the history.


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