Acceptance of the ALDE Presidency - Speech Transcript

Good evening fellow Members.

I am truly honoured to have been selected as the President for the incoming term. I would like to express my gratitude to the Executive Committee and Karen Leoncelli for their continued support.

Executive Members;

Rodney Jackson - President

Mark Fleming - Secretary

Gordon Templeton - Treasurer

Ordinary Members;

David Cameron

Anthony Grodzki

Adam King

Tony Ilijoski

Quok-yeong Ho, and lastly

John Yalden (who has stepped down from the committee for his years of service)

I hereby accept the honour of being your President.

I am pleased tonight that we have so many members in attendance despite the circumstances that restrict this from being an in-person event. I am deeply touched by your presence, thank you again!

Let me introduce myself to those that are hearing me speak for the first time.

My name is Sehon Pellew, and I have been within the land development industry for 18 years, I started attending ALDE member forums and events as a graduate at KLM Spatial, where I worked under the tutelage of Rud Lindley and Carol Gaulke for close to 12 years and developed a sound grounding in the land development process and navigating negotiations with authorities. In 2015 I moved onto SMEC where I had the privilege of working with past ALDE President’s John Maxwell, Darren Powell and Stephen Watters amongst others that have made notable contributions to the land development industry as a whole throughout the years. At SMEC I started increasingly getting involved with ALDE by assisting then President Stephen Watters through attendance at industry workshops or meetings which later culminated in my nomination to the ALDE Executive Committee and subsequently becoming ALDE Vice President. Currently, I am now at Millar | Merrigan as the General Manager of Operations.

I am excited for what the future brings as an association and the land development industry.

Whilst we face numerous challenges ahead, this also brings opportunities. I believe that ALDE needs not only to keep pace with but—to lead the way—in skilling up our industry, communicating with our members and providing greater benefits for them at all stages and levels of their careers. Anyone who has worked with me can tell you, that I am a big believer in encouraging people to get the best out of themselves. Diversity and inclusion has been talked about for some time as a goal, but let’s start working to turn this commitment into practical changes, so that every single member feels welcome and can flourish to their highest potential.

We cannot walk alone, as we have much work to do. We have a lot of exciting initiatives that we are currently working on for next year and would love to have as many of you get involved with ALDE, there will be more information forthcoming on joining our sub committees which is open to everyone. ?