Category: Event Coverage

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Martin Luther King Jr Service Quote

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I hope Dr. King’s legacy has inspired you to serve today or soon to make a difference in your community.

I had the chance to serve with Capital Cause this weekend in support of the US Dream Academy. This organization is doing some great things to ensure at risk children in the DC area (and other major cities) are empowered to reach their dreams through academic, social, and values enrichment.

Financially FearlessAlso to catch you up on what I’ve been doing in other realms… Two weeks ago I had the chance to head to sixth&i in DC and hear Alexa von Tobel (@alexavontobel) the Founder and CEO of Learnvest.com speak. It was a great talk on finances from her new book Financially Fearless and it was also wonderful to hear someone who is really passionate about getting people to be “financially fearless.” I left there feeling empowered and ready to take my budgeting and saving to the the next level. I even decided to join their financial planning program which offers advisors for a monthly fee. So we shall see how that goes.

Last week I had the chance to participate in a twitter chat with Travel Noire and Black Enterprise. The chat was about travel and focused on the #ZeroBaggage challenge which encouraged travelers to take a trip in the month of February with no bag. This goal of the challenge is to empower people to “pack less and live more.” I know from personal experience that too many bags can hold you back in the travel process. This challenge shows that you can travel bag free and be ok. I am going to do the challenge (still deciding on destination) for a weekend and will definitely blog about how it went. The chats are continuing throughout the month of January every Tuesday at 1pm EST. So follow the #ZeroBaggage hashtag to participate and keep up.

Christen McCluney

This post covered A LOT. Which means I need to write more often. Next post will focus on creating your vision! I’m working on my vision board and am thinking about hosting a gathering so others can create them as well.

Also here are some of my blog articles from this month:

Until next time…

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So sorry that I haven’t posted on here in a while. But I wanted to make sure that I shared with you about Social Media Week DC.

In case you don’t know what social media week is

From February 18-22, Washington DC will host its second Social Media Week, a week-long festival featuring independently curated (and mostly free) speakers, panels, workshops, events, and parties all across the district celebrating tech and social media in the Nation’s Capital.

If you know me you know this is something pretty exciting for me, and I’m excited to be on the editorial team for social media week this year. I’ll be writing three blog postings during the week (one is up already) but I’ll be attending a variety of fantastic events throughout the week.

Check out the Social Media Week DC site to see what sessions are still open and visit my calendar in the Newsroom section to see what sessions you can find me at.

Follow me on twitter @simplychristen as I live tweet through several events this week and follow the hashtag #SMWWDC to keep up with what is going on.

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Freedom Awards Recognize Employer Support

September 30, 2010
By Christen N. McCluney

Hundreds of people came together last week to honor 15 employers from across the nation for the 2010 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award.

The Freedom Award, created by Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR), a Department of Defense agency, publicly recognizes employers who provide exceptional support to their Guard and Reserve employees.

The award, which is in its 15th year, is the highest in a series of employer recognition awards given by the Department of Defense.

Nominations come from a Guard or Reserve member employed by the organization they are nominating or from a family member.

James G. Rebholz, the National Chairman of ESGR said that there were over 2700 nominations for the award this year and that a select committee narrowed it down to 15 candidates. He added the winners this year stood above the other entries based on the types of things they’ve done on a personal human basis for their employers.

“Every year it’s exciting to me,” he said. “It never ceases to amaze me that the level of employer support seems to increase and that is what we are seeing here.”

The 2010 recipients included include seven large American corporations, four small businesses and four public sector organizations and ranged from universities to major corporations.

One of the recipients of the Freedom Award was East Carolina University. They were nominated by Lt. Col. Paul J. Schenarts who is in his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan with the United States Army Medical Corps and serves as trauma surgeon at the university in the school of medicine. Steve Ballard, chancellor of the university, said he was “honored, surprised and thrilled” to receive the award.

“To get this recognition  made us feel good,” he said. “Other universities get more money, get more credit and get more recognition but this is more important to us than any of those things.”

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Steven Boos also nominated his employer Food Lion for their support during his deployment. Boos, who works as a store manager for the company, said his company worked around his schedule when he had to leave for training , made sure to keep him in the loop while he was deployed through emails and phone calls and always made him feel comfortable that he had a place to return to.

“They made me feel like I was a part of the bigger picture,” he said.

Cathy Green, president of Food Lion, accepted the award on behalf of her organization. She said the company has over 230 employees in the Guard and Reserve and they send care packages, write letters, check in on families and do yard work to make sure the families know they are cared for.

“It’s an incredible honor for our organization,” she said.  “When I think about people like Steve and the things they do everyday to give us freedom as Americans words can’t describe how I felt that we were nominated.”

The 2011  Freedom Award nomination season will be Nov. 1 to Jan. 17, 2011 and nomination information will be available on the Freedom Award website.

To learn more about the Employer Support Freedom Awards and to see a complete list of  recipients visit the Defense.gov special.