I am so honored and blessed to be North Carolina’s state president of Epsilon Sigma Alpha. Each year we have all worked tirelessly for our community, our state, our nation, and of course St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and we have much to be proud of! This year my theme is “Up, Up, and Away with ESA”. Dolly Parton once said that “Dreams are of no value if they are not equipped with wings.” I have so many dreams for ESA, and this year I am going to work to equip my dreams with wings so they can have value and come true, and the wings are all of us. I want to see us go “up, up, and away” together.

I have so many dreams for ESA, but have decided to focus on two for this year. One we are already beginning to see progress being made. As many of you have learned at convention and some of you already knew; I began in ESA as a collegiate. So, it is not hard to imagine that one of my goals is to see our community and collegiate chapters come together more; and not operate separately. We have so much to learn from each other and we all share a common goal of serving others. This was a main topic of my leadership program at convention. We brainstormed ideas together on Sunday morning with the collegiates who came to our convention. We will be hearing much more about this throughout the year from Britney Abernethy and Sharon Long, our T&C Connection Coordinators, but please share with us your ideas and goals on this.

My second dream is for us to do more with philanthropic work. We do amazing work, and we have so much to be proud of; but I think we can make an even bigger mark on the world with just one small thing. I’d like to see our chapters try one new project this year. We are also going to do service/philanthropic work at our council meetings, so be sure to come to our state meetings. We will learn about everything going on across the state in ESA, spend time with friends (and make new ones); but also to be of service to others. Our first state meeting in September will have a Hope for Heroes service project for our military. Brandy Boone will also be giving our chapters ideas for new projects throughout the year, so check out the newsletter for these exciting happenings.

As always, if you know of someone who is not a member of ESA, please invite them. Everyone is welcome.

Thank you again to all of you for the honor of serving as your president, and together we will go “up, up, and away”.

Kristen Corbell
2011-2012 NC ESA State President