Vice-Chairman of the Board: My experiences
Over the past 10 months, I have been the Vice-Chairman of Asset | IB&M. In this article, you can read about my experiences over the past months and get more insight into what a board year and being vice entails.
My name is Mylene van der Welle, I’m 20 years old and I was born and raised in Melissant. Currently I’ve been living in Tilburg for 3.5 years already and I am finishing up my bachelor’s degree in International Business Administration. When I started my bachelors in 2019, I had no idea what Asset was, let alone that you could become active, so I started my journey at IB&M quite late in September 2021. I started out fresh in a committee that already started in February, the Recruitment Event. The first few meetings I was a little confused, but I enjoyed it a lot, and my orange love grew quickly. Since I missed out a lot on my student time during Covid, I decided that I wanted to join as many events as possible, and so I did! I enjoyed my time at all these events and I then learned that you could also do a board year, which would start in February. At first I was a bit hesitant, putting my bachelors on break in the middle of the uni year, but in the end I’m very happy that I made that decision.
It didn’t take a lot for me to be convinced to apply for the position of Vice-Chairman. I enjoyed going to the events, talking to people, and the whole atmosphere at the rooms. Additionally, I was very young when I started my studies and really didn’t have any clue into what kind of masters I wanted to do after my bachelors. With the application deadline for masters coming up, and me not knowing what to do, I wanted more experience before making a choice. Doing a board year seemed like the perfect solution to the problem: having fun with friends, joining fun events, and learning more about what I wanted for my future.
Being a Vice-Chairman is a very diverse task, and as basic as it sounds, every day is different. As a vice, you have to juggle a lot of different tasks, but some of your main tasks are the Active Member Policy, Promotion and Marketing, and the Events Yearplanning.
The Active Member Policy means that you are responsible for everything related to the Active Members, the core of the association. During the summer and winter, you recruit new members for the committees, but additionally, you make sure that your current members are enjoying their committees and time at IB&M. Sometimes you do this by joining events and talking to people, and other times you have 10 evaluation talks in a day. This makes it very diverse and a lot of fun!
English is one of your main communication languages since internationalization is one of our core points within the association. When meeting new members, you always have new member talks, and these are always in English. Such as our board meetings, committee meetings, and at events. Making sure that people are aware that we are an international department is also important to portray in our active member promotion.
Promotion and Marketing is your other most important task during the week. Making sure the members are updated through weekly updates, promotion in IBA or IM group chats, Instagram, TikTok, you name it and you probably have to do it. Canva will be your best friend during your board year, and luckily for us vices, this program is really easy to use! The nicest thing about the promotion and marketing, is the creative freedom you get. You basically get to design and do whatever you want, if it fits within your budget, which is really nice.
Your last, most important task, is the yearplanning. IB&M hosts a lot of events, which have to be spread evenly across the year. Making the planning is a challenge, but also a lot of fun. You get to pick which event will be hosted when, but luckily the task is very easy.
Of course you also have smaller tasks, such as tasks for Asset General, coordinating committees, organizational tasks, and all other things that come your way. For Asset General you are part of the Public Relations Meeting (PM for short) which is a meeting for all vices of all departments of Asset. During PM you discuss events such as the COdE, Kick-Off Party, and all other events Asset organizes. Together you decide the course of the promotion, how much beer you will give away, and make sure that there are events for passive members of Asset as well.
Coordinating committees is the most fun in my opinion! Together with your committees, you organize different events, make merchandise, and all in all have a lot of fun! During my board year I had the following committees: Recruitment Event, Promotion, Activities, Sports, European Trip, Almanak, Exchange & Internship, and International. If it was possible, I would have wanted them all, but unfortunately 7 committees is a little bit the max..
So, what does a board year teach you then? And should you go for it? During my board year, I learned a lot and developed myself personally in a lot of ways. I loved leading the committees, helping out during the TOP Week, working on the Almanak, fighting during PM over who would get the most tickets for the COdE, and so many design skills (I never thought I would learn so much about Canva and Adobe). Your communication skills will go through the roof, and you will learn how to manage stress and setbacks. While my year started out still in lockdown, I was glad that everything opened up so quickly and stayed open during my whole board year. If you would ask me to do it all again, it would definitely be a yes, and in my opinion there is no reason why you shouldn’t apply for a board year!
I want to thank all of you guys since it has been an absolute pleasure being Vice-Chairman of IB&M! I will never forget all the fun memories, the chill days at the rooms, and the crazy stuff I experienced with you guys, and I am grateful for everyone that made this such a wonderful year. I’ll see you all for sure at the Lustrum!
Dikke kus <3, fat kiss
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