Since the inception of the Association of Laboratory Managers over 40 years ago, the mission of our nonprofit has been to educate laboratory managers to become better leaders. (More about ALMA History here) We take this mission very seriously and for the last 40 years have held annual conferences that have provided education, training, and networking to improve lab management and leadership skills for our community.

As you all know, 2020 has been a challenging year. When it became clear that we would not be able to hold our annual conference, we needed to find a way to hold fast to our mission and to maintain the partnerships with our dedicated sponsors. Now, we are proud to announce our virtual version of our conference! ALMA2020 is a combination of seven webinars offered for free to our community, and the online networking forum powered by Givitas. Many of you have already joined the ALMA Givitas Ring and now we are rolling out the ALMA2020 Lab Manager Leadership Webinar Series.

An exciting group of speakers with multiple years in the laboratory management field is lined up to present webinars on pertinent topics for lab managers ranging from Staff Productivity to Laboratory Safety.

We will kick off our ALMA2020 Webinar series in September with talks from Mark Kennedy on Counterintuitive Productivity and Jonathan Walston on Laboratory Resource Planning and Modeling using Activity-Based Costing.

Continuing in October with talks from Scott Hanton on New Challenges to Lab Management – Leading and Developing Remotely and Mary Schwans on Meeting Challenges of a Multigenerational Workforce.

In November there will be talks from James Kaufman on Leadership in Laboratory Safety: The Manager’s Role and Joe Keary on Laboratory Directors: Find Balance in the Pandemic. The last webinar will be December 2, Back to Business as Usual: How Labs Are Changing and Adapting Operations Post -Crisis.

Lastly, we expect to meet in person next year for ALMA2021@Louisville October 3-7, 2021. Mark your calendars! We hope to see you all then.