Catherine Lutes, President

To all our AAUW of Oregon members,

Well, it’s official! I am now honored to be
the new President of AAUW of Oregon.

I cannot begin to thank Linda Lybecker for
her generous mentorship and loving
encouragement. We are so lucky to have
her continue as our new Technology
Chair, and I thank Georgia Applegate,
from the bottom of my heart for her
tireless chairing of the Technology
Committee and also the AAUW of Oregon
Online Branch, which she will continue to
lead.

I’d like to tell you a little about myself and my goals for the next two years. My background is in education, and some, but certainly not all, of my passions are getting more girls and women into STEAM occupations, another is affordable, loving childcare, and another is reducing student loan debt. I would love to visit each one of our branches in the next two years, so
please invite me to attend your branch meetings. If you can put me up, as well, that will save the State budget a fair amount of money. I really don’t want to see any more branches fold, because we need all of us to work for equity, so please reach out and let me (and the rest of the
board) know what we can do to support you in this important work. We are looking into videoing additional programs of interest to the entire state and putting them up on our YouTube channel, so everyone may share them with their branches. This should be of special interest to those branches that are small, but mighty!

Our Public Policy team will sponsor a Lobby Day in February 2025 in Salem at the Capitol Building and offer some members the opportunity to meet virtually, so I hope to see many of you there. It will be a long legislative session, and we will follow and advocate for many bills.

The new and former board members met the first weekend of June at the lovely Oregon Gardens, where we got to know each other, say thank you and farewell to outgoing board members, started working on the strategic plan, did some planning for our Centennial Celebration in April in Lebanon, discussed some Lobby Day ideas, and prioritizing supporting
branches, among other topics.

More to come. I’d like to thank you all for the invaluable work you do for equity. May we remember to always do it with passion, integrity, and love.

Catherine Lutes
President
AAUW of Oregon