Thank You for Your Support!
Today, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, a wonderful holiday and a joyful expression of gratitude that many Americans celebrate with their families. For someone like me, a first-generation immigrant, Thanksgiving is a time, when my family joins around the holiday table to reflect on and celebrate the many opportunities we have been blessed with. Since co-founding Business Relationship Management Institute in February 2013, my every day and every waking moment has become one blissful act of thanks 
giving! From the moment I have had the pleasure to meet with Aaron Barnes and Vaughan Merlyn, my fellow BRM Institute co-founders and peer mentors, to the instant, when Ahmed Abdel Monem, our very first enrolled Founding Member, made our dream real by signing up for BRM Institute membership, less than 20 minutes after we turned on our membership payment processing system… to having the pleasure and the privilege to join and welcome our first webinar attendees, to connecting and working with Roy Youngman, Glenn Remoreras, and Sheila Smith and many other of our early volunteers and eager supporters. This has been a remarkable journey for all of us at BRM Institute! The privilege to work with you and to serve the BRM community helping thousands of BRMs and dozens of organizations across the world makes our job truly special!
To advance the Institute’s mission and to move the many of our key initiatives forward requires much more than what the small team of BRM Institute employees could ever hope to accomplish. Success of our professional development and certification programs depends on the expert skills, dedication, and invaluable contributions of our world-class content development team including Aaron Barnes, Jon Baxter, Peter Lijnse, Kim Longmuir, Vaughan Merlyn, Stephen Plante, Tudor Rees, Elka Schrijver, Kristy Trice, and Joseph Topinka. Our Communities of Interest initiative has been made possible thanks to Reuben Connolly’s leadership and dedicated support. On behalf of everyone, who will soon benefit from our peer Mentoring program, I thank Monica Graham for her leadership, incredible energy, and enthusiasm, which made the program possible. I thank Stephanie Walsh and all other members of BRM Council for helping to move the Institute and the BRM profession forward! We are very fortunate to have the support and guidance of Phyllis Montello, Joseph Topinka, and Frank Wander, members of BRM Institute Executive Council. The Institute owes its very existence to the dedicated support of its many volunteers and the trust and loyalty of its members. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart!
To succeed in the important work BRM Institute set out do, we depend on our trusted business partners APMG-International, Van Haren Publishing, GoTo Marketers, and WW@Law. Their enthusiastic support of the Institute’s mission and impeccable professionalism of every member of our partners’ teams is a powerful source of inspiration and learning for me, my BRM Institute colleagues, and everyone who has had the pleasure of working with them.
The ongoing success, continuous improvement, and the future of our professional development programs are in the capable hands of our Registered Providers (RPs) including Service Management Art, The Merlyn Group, and GR8 Service Management. The list of our RPs, which already includes the world’s topmost trainers in the BRM space, is about to undergo a major expansion, as new training organizations complete their RP accreditation process with APMG-International. I thank our current and future trainers for helping raise the bar of BRM professionalism by tirelessly promulgating the latest in the BRM knowledge!
The noble task of serving the many needs of a rapidly developing professional community requires significant financial resources to lay down, maintain, and develop the infrastructure, to hire talent, and just to “keep the lights on.” Our work would not be possible without the generous financial support of our Business Value Champions™: Leading Edge Forum, Service Management Art, The Merlyn Group, and APMG-International. The Institute’s work for the benefit of the BRM community and the positive impact it has on the organizations across the world is made possible by the contributions of the hundreds of loyal BRM Institute members and the support of thousands of professionals around the globe. I thank you!
It is a great honor and privilege to co-create the Institute with you and to help narrate the great collective success story of the global BRM community! I thank you for your trust, your loyal support, and for every opportunity to assist you!
Sincerely,
Aleksandr Zhuk
Co-Founder and President
Business Relationship Management Institute