President / Gabriel Bargen

I am very excited to be serving as your 2020 ISHA President. ISHA has developed into a strong network of members working to move our professions forward by advocating for speech-language pathologists and audiologists across the state and nation.  

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In July of 2016, I joined the ISHA Executive Board for the first time as secretary and took part in an all-day strategic planning meeting to map out the next 5 years for the organization. I was familiar with all the faces in the room, but I had never taking part in a planning session like this, nor thought about ISHA, or really any organization, at the level that we examined it. We reworked ISHA’s mission statement and defined the vision of ISHA. We worked together to determine goals for our organization. The goals encompassed improving recruitment, retention and growth of membership with continuing education offers and improved website/social media presence, improving leadership with support of committees, strong board members and working with NSSHLA students, and improving advocacy by supporting the STAR, SEAL, and Legislative Committee.  Looking back on this time I can tell you ISHA has met our goals! To highlight a few:  ISHA now has a functioning and cost effective website; we have a strong social media presence on Facebook; membership numbers in 2019 were the highest they have been in many years; our STAR and SEAL are working hard to make sure our members are aware of important issues including working on a caseload capping guidelines and an interstate compact for telehealth. All of ISHA’s accomplishments could not be achieved without the board, volunteers, or membership. I could not be prouder to be a part of this organization. 

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The ISHA board will be mapping out our next 5 year strategic plan this summer. It will be a full day of reviewing what ISHA is, the needs of the members, our organizational goals, and outlining the growth we envision for ISHA. What an exciting opportunity! I can’t wait to share with you the new goals and opportunities for our members. Following the strategic planning, ISHA will host the 2020 ISHA Convention in Boise on October 1-3. We are in the planning stages now for the convention and I can tell you it will be a great event!

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It is my honor to serve ISHA as President, and I sincerely give thanks to all the volunteers involved in making ISHA an organization that Idaho’s SLPs and AuDs can be proud of.  

President Elect / Kimberli Shaner

I am honored to be your 2020 President Elect! The  ISHA board continues to increase our social presence and collaboration with our members.  ISHA is looking forward to the conference in October and we really look forward to collaboration and building the ISHA presence across the state.  We want to hear from our membership if you have ideas or would like to head up a committee contact us so we can get you plugged in for 2020!