For the past 10 years, Joan French has been the Team Leader for the Back Office Admin, Data Entry and Membership group. She recently announced that she intends to step back from that role next month.
Joan’s background
Joan’s earlier career, whilst raising 3 lovely daughters, was to work full time as office manager and bookkeeper for a small company. She has a long history of volunteering and helping others. After retiring from full time employment, she worked for 15 years as a volunteer in a palliative care facility in an administrative role.
Her work at U3AM
Joan joined U3A Manningham in 2011 and initially volunteered to do catering until Margaret Eiden persuaded her to accept a role in officework. In those days, Joan and I and about 50 other members worked in rooms 16, 17 and 18 doing the U3A enrolments. This manual process involved shuffling pieces of paper from one desk to another.
In 2015, she joined Lyn Torrens in the Back Office entering members into classes and developing class lists using the only 2 computers available; this was a mammoth task. In 2016, following Lyn’s departure, U3AM introduced the MyU3A computer system. Joan assumed the role of learning the system and leading the group into what has developed as the smooth well-run organisation that the Back Office is today.
As she reflected on what has been an interesting time, Joan said one of the things she appreciated most was meeting and helping members in the many administrative tasks that crop up on a daily basis.
The future
Do not despair! Joan is not leaving us. She will relinquish her leadership role when a replacement can be recruited. She then intends to stay in the group, helping members with our new Member Wizard computer software. She is looking forward to spending more time with her family and husband, and travelling overseas. That’s the plan.
On a personal note, I have worked with Joan for most of her time at U3AM and particularly closely for the last 5 years. I have appreciated her efforts and unstinting devotion to helping U3AM and, in particular, us members.
Thank you Joan!
Doug Wallace
Enrolments and Data Management