Ah finally! We have an Executive Director. It’s been a long and hard search to find someone who not only has the business skills, but who also fits in with our Imago values. It’s a great pleasure to welcome Tim Atkinson to the Imago world.

Tim’s appointment comes at the end of an exciting year, of which perhaps the highlight was the Toronto Conference held in June. We were able to celebrate the global diversity of Imago, and hear from our faculty and colleagues around the world. We also learned from the Goldsmith Group about techniques to help us build our professional practices.

Since the Conference, over 25 therapists have signed up to work on a pilot program on marketing our practices. We have been learning in a group environment how to increase referrals and attract more clients. Our early experience has been so good, that now we are working with the Goldsmith Group to develop a package tailor-made to help Imago therapists become more successful in business.

Over the last year we conducted a series of promotional events around the USA. Locations included Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Maryland, Toronto, Michigan and Chicago. Harville and Helen and the faculty staged events to attract new therapists, and the general public. The most immediate benefit was to help strengthen the regional organizations. We created a great deal of interest among therapists too, and some have already signed up for training. We’re hoping that many more will join us as we follow up, but we also recognize the need to make Imago training as attractive as possible.

Developing a more attractive basic clinical training was a priority for discussion when the Imago faculty met in New Mexico this October. In next month’s Imago World, our Institute Dean, Bruce Crapuchettes will share our plans. These plans include a new introductory course, which we hope will be an easy first training step for therapists to make. Once they have made this step, non-Imago therapists will understand better how Imago can help their practice, and hopefully be more ready to enter the Certification programs.

Our Board meeting in November was a great chance for us all to meet Tim Atkinson, and to work with him on creating an action plan for the next year and beyond. It was also a time of transition, marked by Harville and Helen leaving the Board, leaving us to run the organization they helped birth.

We are also able to look forwards to many projects with Harville and Helen over the next year. This year they piloted a program called “Couple-hood as a Spiritual path” and are now revising the program based on the results of the pilot. Working through religious groups is a very effective way of reaching a large number of people, and giving them a little taste of the impact Imago could have in their lives. So we look forwards to working with our founders as they roll out this program.

We are also looking forwards to seeing many public appearances from Harville and Helen. Just recently they generated a lot of interest in Imago at the Summit for Clinical Excellence meetings. In 2005 they will be at the Summit meetings in New Orleans and Boulder, and will present at the Psychotherapy Networker, Smart Marriages and the Evolution of Psychotherapy conferences. We will include details of all these events on our website.

Of course Harville and Helen will also join us all at our Imago 2005 conference, in Atlanta, 27th -30th October. I hope you can all join us there too.

In the meantime, we have much work to accomplish, including the publication of this monthly newsletter, Imago World, our attempt to keep all members fully informed of the business and progress of Imago Relationships International (IRI). I encourage you to become active in IRI if you have the time and inclination to join more fully in our mission to “transform the world one relationship at a time.” Let us know what are your interests and talents, and we will find a place for you to contribute.

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