WRYMC 2025

Our members had a great time attending ASCE's Multi-Regional Leadership Conference (MRLC) in San Diego on January 16-18! The MRLCs host many ASCE groups at once, including the Western Regional Younger Member Council (WRYMC), Workshop for Section, Branch, and Institute Leaders (WSBIL), Workshop for Student Chapter Leadres (WSCL), and Practitioner and Faculty Advisor Workshop (PFATW). Thank you to San Diego YMF for hosting!

On Thursday, the afternoon kicked off with various technical tours.

After technical tours, the younger members gathered for a pre-conference social at the Coronado Brewing Company's San Diego Tasting Room.

On Friday, the conference started with a keynote from ASCE's Society President, Feniosky Peña-Mora. The morning continued with a session on ASCE's Geographic Services resources and the Region 9 breakout session. We then had the Committee on Younger Members (CYM) Town Hall and Roundtables session, where we discussed targeted strategies on how to make our chapters stronger. For the PFATW sessions, Sam Potts served as a subject matter expert. Lunch included a keynote from Society President-Elect, Marsha Anderson Bomar. The afternoon kicked off with 'Timing is Everything: Strategies for Smarter Scheduling', hosted by Kelly Keselica. We learned who were the night owls, the morning larks, and the not-so-elusive "third birds". The afternoon capped off with a Society Leaders Q&A and a Student and Younger Member engagement challenge to design a city of the future.

For the night, we joined the LA Section Group at the annual MRLC Section Dinner. There were over 60 attendees! We had the entire restaurant full. After Section dinner, we headed across the street to join the North Park pub crawl! The WRYMC social chairs had organized a game of "Pub Golf", to which our own Sam Potts won!

On Saturday, breakfast included hearing from the 2026 President-Elect nominees, a best practices in board meetings, proposed changes to ASCE membership grades, and the WRYMC Business Meeting. Thank you to our own Matthew Jacobson for leading CYM award changes during the business meeting!

Big news: we might be hosting WRYMC in 2027! (There are still many details to iron out with ASCE's conference realignment plan.)

Jaffer Almosawy then presented on how saying "yes" can help you grow your career. Concurrently, our own Charles Layman shared tips and tricks for communications using ASCE platforms to the WSBIL group.

At lunch, we learned about difficult conversations from Brock Barry, Professor at the United States Military Academy. The official conference programmed wrapped up with a networking session for students and younger members.

At the banquet, we enjoyed a steak and chowder buffet, and received some awards! Due to the October ASCE Convention in Tampa, FL being canceled last minute due to Hurricane Milton, we were presented with the 2024 Large Younger Member Group Award at the WRYMC ceremony.