Welcome to a new year and a new PRSA Kansas Board! Many of the faces remain the same, but we have two new members joining our board: Ashtyn Rottinghaus, Communications Specialist at Textron Aviation, has joined as the Social Media & PR Chair, and Ashton Maxfield, President of Master Plan Communications, has joined us as an at-large member based out of Garden City. I look forward to serving with both of them this year and know they will do outstanding work for our chapter.

This is my third year to serve on the board, and I am pleased to be serving as your president in 2021. We’ve already had our first board meeting of the year, and I’m excited about the momentum and excitement we have going into 2021.

I would like to thank Kim Kufahl, our immediate past president, for her leadership during 2020. She found a way to keep us on schedule and accomplished great things during her term. Akeam Ashford is our president-elect and is in charge of programming this year. If you have thoughts or ideas, please reach out to him.

We plan to continue to host our monthly programs virtually through the month of June. We hope that we can see each other in person by mid-year, but all plans at this point are tentative. To help cover our chapter’s administrative expenses, we will start charging a minimal fee for virtual meetings starting in January. We hope this does not discourage you from attending the monthly meetings, as we have a great slate of speakers lined up and we don’t want you to miss out!

Wishing you great things in 2021 and hoping to see you all in person later this year.

Kristy Bansemer, PRSA Kansas Chapter President