Juleana Piper 2023 President's Message

I am so thankful for the opportunity and tremendous honor to serve as your 2023-2024 JaxALA Chapter President.  I am a long time member of the legal community and have worked as a paralegal for many years, but made the transition to the Administrator role more recently.  ALA was instrumental to me on this journey and it is so exciting to be able to give back to this organization by serving as President.

I would like to thank the previous Board of Directors for all your hard work and dedication to get us to the point we are at today.  We are an organization that works as a team to provides abundant opportunities to learn, teach, mentor and share top quality legal advice and enables us to advocate, brainstorm and give back to the community, meet, network and socialize with friends and colleagues across our legal community. This organization has been instrumental to my professional growth and success and I look forward to sharing that with other incoming members as we continue to grow our Chapter.

I hope to move the needle forward for this organization with the following goals.  I would like to expand our DEIA initiatives.  We have a great base that was built by the last two boards.  We can improve our position through local volunteer organizations such as The Little Diverse Library and other organizations working within Jacksonville to connect residents and communities.

Over the last few years the Jacksonville chapter has built a robust hybrid platform.  I would like build upon this to add members outside the metro Jacksonville area who we are well equipped to meet their membership needs.  In addition, I hope to tap into the legal student community in Jacksonville and look for ways to collaborate with local colleges to develop a pipeline of potential members down the road.

Last, but certainly not least, I will work with the board to expand our Chapter’s usage of the new ALA TradeWing platform.  I envision using this to include member training, to push out our Chapter information and resources and to ultimately move the JaxALA list serv completely to that platform.  This will allow chapter member collaboration and for members to easily be able to search frequently asked topics.

Our chapter’s calendar is full of events and I hope to see each one of you throughout the year! Please do not hesitate to connect with me and any of our Board members, we are here to serve our members. Your ideas and suggestions are valued and welcomed!