Secretary of the Board: My experiences
Over the course of the past 9 months, I have had the amazing opportunity to be the Secretary of the Board of Asset | International Business & Management. In this blogpost, I will tell you more about why I decided to do a board year and what my experiences were.
About me
Before getting into more detail about why I did a board year, the tasks of a secretary and my experiences in general, I will give a short introduction about myself. My name is Cliff de Peijper, 21 years old and grew up in a small village called Oud Gastel. In my second year of IBA, I moved to Tilburg and became active at Asset | IB&M in the IBA Committee. After this first year at IB&M, I went on a great exchange to Hong Kong. In the last semester of my Bachelor, I wanted to develop other skills than in the IBA Committee and joined the Business Club Committee. By being in one of the most time intensive committees, I realized that I really enjoyed my time at IB&M, both because of the fellow members but also the committee work, and was not ready to leave the association yet.
Why a board year?
As mentioned above, I really liked the two years of being active at IB&M. After finishing my Bachelor, I was not sure yet which Master to do and. Apart from that, I did not feel like being graduated and starting to look for a job in a year from then. Furthermore, being able to run your own little ‘company’ including several teams, seemed to be an opportunity that cannot be done in any other situation at this age. Apart from that, there are certain skills which you cannot obtain by just studying, that I thought I could learn by doing a board year. These skills include a professional way of communicating, team management, crisis management, and time management. Hence, during my last semester of IBA, I decided that I wanted to apply.
Tasks of a Secretary
As a secretary, there are several core tasks which you will take on. These include: making minutes during board meetings, responding to incoming email and coordinating committees. Apart from that, a secretary has to attend two Faculty Wide Organs every week: the Webmasters Meeting and Secretary Meeting. In these two, you will meet with all fellow Webmasters and Secretaries of other departments to discuss issues that concern all departments or Asset | Tilburg.
Next to that, there are several portfolios that will be divided among boardies. I was responsible for study support, internationalization, the lecture talk schedule, formal social media and the coordination of 5 committees. This might sound like quite a lot of side-tasks. The reason for this is that a secretary usually has more time available to work on projects because the core tasks tend to take less time than in other functions. Other interesting projects I took on were: having a supportive role in organizing events for the IBA Business Class, representing IB&M in meetings for the upcoming ‘Board Connection Day’ and setting up the new ‘Manager for a Day’ event together with the committee.
In short, a secretary has a wide variety of responsibilities. In this way, you will be involved in a lot of operations going on within the association and you will be in touch with several organs. Apart from that, there is a lot of time to take on projects of your own interest.
Key skills that I have developed
In the paragraphs above, I have been talking quite a lot about developing myself during the past year. I can imagine that this seems quite abstract, so I would like to point out some of the skills I have developed in the past year.
– Planning
– Leading
– Argumentative skills
– Crisis Management
– Organizing events
All in all, my board year has been a unique opportunity to develop myself, meet a lot of wonderful people, expand my professional network, and above all, have lots of fun. The formal events we organized were a great experience, but of course all our informal events with members were unforgettable and gave my motivation a boost.
Now it is time for me to continue with a Master and pass my function on to someone else.
Are you possibly interested in becoming my successor? Subscribe for our virtual board information session on Monday March 30 at 13:00 ‘o clock via: https://www.asset-ibm.nl/event/board_info_session/. Moreover, you can always shoot me a message or an email to secretary@asset-ibm.nl to plan a (virtual) coffee to discuss my experiences in more detail and/or answer all questions you might have!
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