AUTUMN SEEMS TO BE A TIME OF YEAR WHEN WE RESHARPEN OUR FOCUS and, with a back-to-school mentality, dive back into work projects, including new plans to hone our professional and career development plans. Before we know it, December, the holidays, and the end of the calendar year are upon us.

CFA Society Toronto is no exception. In October, we celebrated our 58th Annual Forecast Dinner, where more than 900 members of the financial community, their guests, and local media enjoyed a blend of insightful commentary on our province’s future and a view of the importance of corporate activism, along with a traditional market forecast. Attendees voted on automatic response devices, predicting industry trends and federal election results. We discovered that more than half of the attendees would vote Conservative. Also, two-thirds of our guests believe shareholder activism will remain a significant factor in generating alpha and expect this activity to continue to have an impact on the corporate landscape going forward.

We hosted our fourth annual ETF conference and our half-day Institutional Investment Management Forum. We also tackled in-time programming, highlighting emerging industry issues such as the impact climate change and extreme weather have on investments and the use of Google to enhance the investment decision-making process.

As the year wraps up, we often find ourselves pushing harder, balancing social and work commitments, as well as thinking about our own personal philanthropy and taking inventory of our achievements and goals as we approach 2016.

As I reflect back on my favourite moments of this year, I remember how proud I am of the many ways CFA Society Toronto’s members have volunteered their time and given back to their community and their clients; our members truly do excel in this area.

For example, in January, we successfully implemented our inaugural Ethics Challenge, where master of finance and/or finance economics students analyzed an ethical dilemma and presented their cases in front of a panel of senior charterholders. This provided students with an opportunity to develop the moral compass necessary for emerging leaders in finance.

We also hosted a conference—Getting to Alpha: The Competitive Advantage of Gender Strategy— to explore the topic of gender mix as a competitive strategy and launched an important conversation about the importance of diversity in finance from a business case perspective.

For the very first time, we expanded our public footprint with a series of CFA-focused radio ads that played on local radio channels—including 680 News, 98.1 CHFI, and 590 The Fan. These ads described the competency and commitment of charterholders to our industry in real-life terms.

CFA Society Toronto extends best wishes to you and your family during the holiday season as you enjoy a bit of downtime before tackling a new year and new challenges.

We look forward to connecting with you in 2016.