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Business-savvy
executive director brings change to VPA
(July 2005
Issue)
By Jennifer Chase Esposito
It's been 10 months since Rosanna Czermak took over Jan Trepanier's
position as executive director of the Vermont Psychological Association,
the state's professional organization of psychologists. And in that
short time she's already overhauled the small office's exposure
in the state. But it hasn't been easy. Czermak walked into the tiny
Montpelier office bringing with her a varied background in administration
and program development for much larger organizations. Her mélange
of positions included owning her own company and being a residential
appraiser for a bank before changing careers and heading toward
more medically oriented positions when her children left for college.
Czermak joined the Massachusetts Medical Society, the country's
oldest medical society whose mission is to unite physicians and
help them advance both medical knowledge and maintain and develop
their ethical standards of practice. There, Czermak was the regional
program assistant and involved with its educational and governmental
programming as well as organizing training and events.
She then moved to Brightside, an agency in Springfield, Mass.
that works with severely troubled children, where she was a teacher
and the creator of a business program that taught computer skills
to troubled high school students. It was there, from 2002-2004,
where Czermak became interested in psychology.
"What [Brightside] did was show me how psychologists can really
turn lives around for people who have emotional problems," Czermak
says. "I saw changes in the children and progress … We were giving
them an education."
The common thread throughout Czermak's positions is her business
experience, exactly what VPA needed to increase its outreach not
only to its 260-plus members, but also to the community that needs
better access to its psychologists.
"This position incorporates my educational background and it incorporates
my business background, says Czermak, also a member of Vermont's
Mental Health Council. "We're trying to make VPA more visible in
the state."
But back to the "it wasn't easy" part. Czermak describes a bleak
scene that anyone who has worked in a small office can relate to:
decorated with equipment circa the early 1980s, the Vermont Psychological
Office had only one computer, one fax machine and a copier "that
had an attitude and did what it wanted," she jokes.
Now, Czermak has brought the office into the current decade with
all new equipment that Czermak says she was fortunate enough to
procure via a grant from the American Psychological Association.
"There was a huge restructuring of the office itself to make it
more efficient," says Czermak. "I have been making huge strides,
[and] we are finally automated.
"We're small but I like to say we're mighty mites!"
Czermak works with a two-days-per-week assistant. But with VPA's
newly functioning office, Czermak quickly got to work on VPA's next
money-saving goal: not outsourcing materials like brochures and
newsletters. She's cut her budget from approximately $200 per mailing
to about $40 by printing and posting materials herself and can now
put those funds back into the office.
These things may seem like small potatoes to larger psych association
offices around the country. But Czermak says lacking technology
prohibited much outreach with Vermont's psychological community,
until now.
"I wouldn't necessarily say it was an insufficiency, but I don't
feel VPA was as vocal as it should be, as a readily accessible resource
for the [psychological] community," says Czermak. "I'm very busy
putting a plan together to make VPA a word people recognize in the
state. We want to be the place where people go to for psychological
information."
VPA has a reputation for honoring other organizations for their
good works too, both in the field of psychology and outside of it.
Its Psychologically Healthy Workplace award was created to recognize
businesses and organizations that have demonstrated a commitment
to the psychological health and wellbeing of their employees.
Adding to such programs, Czermak is working on a referral book
to be placed in all health centers in the state that can act as
a listing for psychological referrals. She's developing a new Web
site for the association that, as a companion to the book, will
have reference information for people seeking psychologists, as
well as information such as warning signs for parents to be aware
of whose children may be exhibiting depression.
In the time she's been at VPA, Czermak has seen its membership
increase by 50 percent thanks to marketing. "We've really made an
effort to contact former members as well as new psychologists. I'm
getting on an average of one to three phone calls weekly from psychologists
seeking information so that they can join." "I think [VPA's] visibility
is becoming more prominent," she adds.
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