Page 3 - April Report2022

Resilience
Spring
Robert A. Krause
Seasons can offer a certain rhythm to life. Fall feels reflective and JSF has certainly had a celebratory reflective season. On the heels of a 30th Anniversary, we looked
back on over 20 years of JSF work through the lens of Malcolm’s CEO leadership. Recently, we celebrated Hugh’s contribution to JSF with a retirement dinner that included congenial reflections from both Hugh and Directors. The following night, King shared with us reflective thoughts of his life and experiences.
While fall feels reflective, spring is about new beginnings and fresh opportunities. Spring is the smell of fresh cut grass. Spring training buzzes with the hope of every club that this could be the year. If you’re in the citrus business, its’s bloom time. The trees wake up and the smell of citrus bloom holds the optimistic promise of what could be a good year. The theme of spring is the optimism of hope in what could be. If fall is reflective, spring is opportunistic.
It’s spring. Not just on the calendar, but in the rhythm of the JSF life cycle. And because of the pandemic, it really feels like the first spring in a few
years. The spring of 2020 brought COVID-19 and the prevailing sentiment was more of disruption than opportunity. A year later, in the height of the pandemic, April 2021 did not feel like the start of opportunities. Instead, that April just felt like more of the same in warming weather. But the spring of 2022 is beginning to feel like spring.
It feels like spring at JSF. There is a growing sense of opportunity and new beginnings. For the first time in over 10 years, our West Palm Beach office has moved locations. Organizations are opening up for site visits and our tentative travel schedule is busy. The planning phase of the Discovery project will pick up in the next few months. The PACKS program will move forward by engaging two potential candidate schools in June. June also will kick off the GWU research project in the SUSF summer meeting. All these activities take place in 2022 where our grant budget jumped from $9.5 million to $11.7 million in one year. That’s a lot of opportunity.
This is an exciting season in the life of JSF. It’s tempting to proclaim, with hands raised, “WHAT A GLORIOUS PICTURE!”
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