Shelly Taleporos
Shelly Taleporos served as the VP of Education and Programs for the AGA’s NY Capital Chapter this year. The COVID pandemic brought many challenges this year and Shelly did an amazing job handling the adversity and difficulties adapting to the environment we all have lived through the past 12 months.
Success for Education and Programs can be measured in so many ways, the number of CPEs offered during the program year, the number of people reached with chapter programs, the money raised which is used to subsidize not only educational programs, but used to subsidize over $3,000 in community service donations made by the chapter this year, and so many other facets of the chapter’s operations.
This year the AGA NY Capital Chapter offered 13 CPE events totaling more than 50 CPEs with more than 12 of those CPEs being offered free to not only chapter members but any member across the entire AGA enterprise. Shelly’s philosophy was simple, with so many employers and people in financial distress, many AGA members were unable to easily pay for training, so the AGA NY Capital Chapter should offer them as many free CPEs as possible, and the events the chapter did charge for, the chapter structured as low cost as possible. This year the chapter provided CPEs to over 1,200 attendees with over 400 being AGA members across the AGA family of chapters.
In addition, the pandemic forced the chapter to go virtual with all events, which required investing many extra hours of time and dedication learning a new platform and running all the virtual events. As many AGA chapters experienced, the AGA NY Capital Chapter ran into its share of unexpected issues during the year and clear communication to its customers was critical. Shelly handled all of them with a level of professionalism and grace she should be applauded for.
Shelly Taleporos is the NY Capital Chapter’s 2020-2021 Volunteer of the Year.