President's Message - Spring 2010
6/6/10

David Rothman, D.D.S.
CSPD President  

I’m sitting on the plane traveling back to San Francisco after five glorious and exhilarating days at the CSPD annual session in Cancun run by our Presidentelect, Ora Lowe. It was a wonderful time with lectures by the heavy hitters in their fields and amazing weather and warm Mexican hospitality in the beautiful Caribbean setting of the Yucatan. I’ll have fond memories of seeing old friends, making many new friends and accepting the uncharted challenges of the presidency of CSPD. Ora did an incredible job overcoming the challenges of cross border and cross cultural differences. Our doors were opened to the world as there were attendees from not only North America (USA, Canada and Mexico) but from Europe as well. This meeting provided an unparalleled educational, networking and alliance building experience. The parallel is not lost that the meeting occurred in the Mayan region where culture, exploration, scientific knowledge and civilization grew and prospered in pre-Columbian time. Muchas gracias, Ora! You can rest now.  

The CSPD Board members and invited consultants have finished the initial phase of the strategic planning. We have developed both a new mission and vision statement and have identified four strategic goals that we believe will improve CSPD and maintain it as the leader of pediatric dentistry in California. I invite you to visit our website (www.CSPD.org) and examine the results of this strenuous self assessment. Our goals will serve as the destination points in our organization’s travels and, in summary, they support the triad of services that are the cornerstone of CSPD: advocacy for the children we serve, education that is timely and cutting edge and membership services that will enable us to practice better and more efficiently in this era of upheaval and change.  

All of this overlies a newly designed committee and administrative structure which we hope will be less duplicative and more streamlined, responsive and cost effective. Among the many things we’ll be implementing will be a more accessible and transparent volunteer structure as well as a more unified and comprehensive offering of continuing education. Lofty goals, you ask? Rome wasn’t built in a day and these changes will not occur overnight. We will implement this over a period of time while being flexible and responsive to changes in the landscape and will continually reevaluate our progress.  

We have a strong foundation build through the years of hard work by the past leaders in our organization. Although the road map to our goals has not been completed, the destination is in sight and the highway will be built along the way. It will take the work of many teams of dedicated workers: our highly talented and motivated board members, our committee members, and the help of those who have guided us in the past. All of these individuals and the future generation of CSPD members will be instrumental in keeping us straight on this road we’re paving. This journey is like the airplane flight I’m on; I know where I’m going, I know where I’ve been and I want the best possible and least turbulent ride possible. I’ll be calling on many of you for your help and expertise. Join us on the trip.  

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