FOCM Activities – January 2016

January 27, 2016 – I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was in the Houston, TX area for a PRA National Sales Meeting and they’d invited vendors that they partner with or were considering partnering with.

As is my custom, I email everyone I know in the area when I’m traveling and invite them to meet me for drinks/dinner.  I was very fortunate that former co-worker Lori Engallina Smith and her husband Wayne Smith joined me that night, along with my co-workers.  I’ve known Lori since 2002 when I first joined ICON Clinical Research’s Interactive Technologies Group.  This was my first meeting of Wayne.  Wonderful people, great Americans.  The ceremony was powerful, such excitement and thrills.  I forget the name of the restaurant, but it was a Mexican restaurant -shocking, I know.

Welcome Lori and Wayne as card carrying members of FOCM!

Lori Engallina Smith

 

Wayne Smith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the following day at the PRA meeting, I ran into Dorothy Brown, yes, THE Dorothy Brown.  We’d worked together at Quintiles in the early 2000’s.  Not that long ago, really, no really, it wasn’t, well it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.

Dorothy Brown

FOCM Card Ceremony

On December 9, 2015, while in RTP on business, Chris McArthur received his FOCM membership card.  It’s taken a while to post this as there were some troubling inconsistencies in his background check but all has been resolved.  A simple mis-identification from the juvenile court system records.  We welcome Chris with full membership privileges.  His 2016 membership dues were waived.  Invoices will shortly be going out for 2017.

Chris and I have known each other ~8 years; having wroked together at ICON in the late 00’s and early ’10s.  Chris is now Director of Business Development at INC Research.

Chris McArthur