Why I Volunteer

Each month, our chapter will have a volunteer spotlight. Our chapter has a variety of Chapter Volunteer Opportunities available for yearlong and specific events (PDD) to fit various member volunteer needs.

Jacy Imikowski, Mental Fitness and Resilience Coach & Speaker, Chapter Member and Presenter

I started volunteering shortly after joining the Madison/S. Central WI chapter. A colleague invited me to join them on the professional development day (PDD) volunteer team. It made me feel so welcome and included that my skills could be of value to a group that I had just joined! I was on the PDD team for a few years, and I am still friends with some of the people I volunteered with there. I also made relationships with folks in the business community that I had worked with in my role as well.

The relationships that come from volunteering are invaluable, and especially for a new member it's a wonderful way to create more connections, meet more people, and get more value out of the chapter as a whole. I highly recommend volunteering.

Keith Thompson, President, former VP Professional Development

As a project manager and member of PMI for 15 years, I had been happy to show up once a month for chapter meetings, collect my PDU and then move on. As I began to reflect on my carrer: a retrospective on where I’d been and future planning on where I’d like to be, I realized that my skills, while incredibly deep in my subject area, were also somewhat narrow. In order to broaden my project management horizons, I made a conscious decision to become more involved. Part of that involvement led to volunteering. As a volunteer, I have had the opportunity to socialize with fellow PMPs, to learn from these PMPs and to build out skills that had lain dormant since I passed my PMP exam many years ago. In return, I contribute to our local project management comunicty. I have enjoyed collaborating with my peers to advance the field of project management and to nurture along younger PMs. The time comitment is minor. The payback is tremendous. I would encourage anyone interested in reaching out and getting involved.