Welcome to the 2011/2012 year at Toronto CFA Society. It is my distinct privilege to be your President this year as we continue to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of our society. We are a leading society within the global CFA Institute and continue to lead with integrity, innovation and, most importantly, by the strength of our significant base of committed volunteers. It is through the efforts of these individuals that we continue to deliver meaningful, content-rich programming that our members can use as soon as they return to their offices.

At this year’s Annual Forecast Dinner in early October, we are thrilled to bring you three outstanding speakers, Abby Joseph Cohen, CFA, James Grant and Stephen Roach. These speakers will share their unique insights and provide us with a global perspective on the capital markets as we continue the road to economic recovery. While the Forecast Dinner is our pre-eminent event for the year, programming in general continues to be one of our top two priorities for the upcoming year. By going beyond our highly successful lunch presentations and focusing on smaller sessions, including on-line content, we hope to evolve our programming to meet the more targeted needs of our members. Whether our members attend the occasional event or look to fulfill the Continuing Education (CE) credit requirements for CFA Institute, we will endeavour to have something for everyone. And importantly, we will continue to seek your feedback to ensure we are meeting your needs.

In addition to programming, our other key priority will be to enhance the CFA brand within the Toronto investment community. Many of our members rely on us to be their advocates and we take this role very seriously. We will focus our outreach efforts on key stakeholder groups, including employers, universities and the media. By prioritizing our efforts with key stakeholders, we endeavour to use our resources wisely to demonstrate the value of the CFA designation which we believe is a direct benefit to our diverse membership base. We look forward to working with you this year and are keenly interested in your views, ideas and suggestions for improvement. Please join us at one and, hopefully, many more of our events this year.