Chapter focus: Arizona.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.

Area Covered: State of Arizona

Year Founded: June 21, 1952

No. Members: 110

Member Companies Represented: Membership includes executives from publicly traded companies, small private companies, academics and retirees. Companies include: AAA Arizona Inc.; Arizona State University; Best Western International Inc.; Cold Stone Creamery; The Dial Corp. and Radyne Corp.

Annual Dues: $285, which includes the cost of meals at events.

Meeting Schedule: We host seven dinner meetings with a prominent speaker; each meeting is preceded by a technical session presented by one of our sponsors. We host a Holiday Social in December, with invited spouses and guests of members and sponsors. Our Spring Social is in May, which, this year, coincides with FEI's Summit 2008. So, we've combined our social with the Opening Reception on Sunday night, May 4.

Regional Challenges: Membership has stabilized at around 110 for the last few years. Growing the chapter as the community expands is a challenge. A committee is personally following up with all guests from prior meetings and the CFO of the Year finalists from the November event. Our committees incorporate members and sponsors to add an element of diversity and breadth to our organization, and several sponsors actively recruit guests to our monthly meetings.

Recent Highlights:

* Programs. We continue to get high attendance at our monthly meetings--the February meeting drew 70 attendees--due to exceptional speakers. The Program Committee is tasked with the responsibility of providing speakers for dinner meetings and instructors for educational seminars. We have sought speakers who have leadership roles at public and private companies or from the government sector. Topics for presentations are selected by speakers. We aim for at least one speaker a year from the banking or economic community and have attracted such notables as Anthony Chan, from JP Morgan and Ira Kalish, from Deloitte.

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We devote one meeting to recognizing the academic achievements of the top accounting students at the state universities.

Speakers for 2007-08 include: Johnny Basha, vice chairman of Bashas' Inc., a 140-store super market...