In this edition of Meet the Publishers, we’re taking you out of our office building and into the publishing world at large—specifically, the LDS publishing world.
On Friday, April 3, the Latter-day Saint Publishing Professionals Association held its inaugural meeting at the Salt Lake City Public Library. It was an exciting day of meeting new friends, brainstorming about our aims for the association, and determining what to do next.
We were fortunate to have Kimball Fisher, a renowned expert in organizational behavior and leadership, to guide us through the process. Kimball spent his career working with Fortune 500 companies and recently retired. He and his wife, Maureen, led us through a series of group activities to help us determine what we all wanted from this association and how we can serve each other and the world of publishing.
Throughout the morning, as we met the students, professors, executives, writers, editors, and various other professionals in attendance, we gained insights from each other and bonded over our shared experiences in publishing.
During our lunch break, we shared stories about how our membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has shaped our professional careers or changed how we do business. For example, here at Cedar Fort, we have experienced some incredible growth in the past ten years. And it was about ten years ago that we began praying together as a company. We know prayer helps us think more clearly and invites a good spirit into our meetings. We’re grateful for the growth we’ve experienced as a result.
After lunch we tried to narrow our focus to specific actions we can take now to move the association forward. We also appointed board members to serve on the first board of directors for the organization. Our president, Bryce Mortimer, is one of the founding board members. It was inspiring to see the dedication that has already begun in this effort as everyone in attendance began volunteering their time and talents to the cause.
We hope that as this association grows, we’ll find even more enthusiastic professionals who want to join us. Stay tuned for more info about upcoming LDSPPA events and opportunities, and please comment on this post if you’d like to learn more about how you can be involved.
All photos in this post appear courtesy of Kathryn Thompson.
