This Week: Col. Jen Fullmer, Air Force Military Pilot
Jen Fullmer began her career as a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadet at the University of Northern Colorado with the goal of becoming an Air Force pilot. She spent her first three years in the Air Force as a human resources officer, attended pilot training, and held many roles on her path from B-1 Bomber pilot, to commander and Air Force senior leader. Jen explains that as a military pilot, flying is only part of the job. The majority of time is spent working in the traditional roles that keep any organization running like human resources, finance, logistics, training, operations, etc. Over the course of her 24-year Air Force career, she moved 14 times and had the opportunity to lead and follow at many levels and in diverse capacities. She says that her time training as a pilot instilled in her the value of accepting and providing constructive feedback and the importance of continuing to learn, improve, and adapt as situations evolve. Her transition from the Air Force to Maine provided another opportunity to apply these lessons as she took on a whole new challenge of building and running a nonprofit organization from concept to sustainability.
Jen officially retired as a Colonel in 2015 and is now dedicated to serving Maine. She and her husband are not originally from Maine but chose to be here and are proud to call Biddeford, Maine home, where she is an active member of the Biddeford Saco Rotary Club.
For the past four years Jen has been building and leading a Maine nonprofit she founded called Boots2Roots. Boots2Roots is preparing transitioning active-duty military members and their families to hit the ground running in Maine, while providing a pipeline of quality talent for Maine’s workforce. Jen was always taught to grow your replacement and leave an organization better than you found it, which she has done with Boots2Roots. That is her personal commitment and charge to Maine’s up-and-coming leaders.
Jen will speak about the evacuation of a fellow Colonel and his family from Afghanistan. To quote Dick Hall, our District Governor, “ask Jen to speak about the evacuation from Afghanistan – it is quite a story”.
SOCIAL Meeting of May 26th: Rotarians Gather For Fun!
| by Tom Talbott
Trying something new, the Portland Rotary held it's first "Club Social Meeting" on Thursday, May 26th, from 5p-7p at the Italian Heritage Club. While we cherish our weekly meetings and excellent slate of speakers, we felt that it was equally as important just to meet and socialize, mix and mingle, something that can often be constrained by the timeline of our traditional sit-down lunch, announcements, and speaker. Though it was on the eve of a Memorial Day weekend, we had 31 paid attendees. The $20 went to cover a tasty buffet of hors d'oeuvres, and everyone received a complimentary beverage from the bar. For a little bit of entertainment, Bowen Depke set up a showing of our club's 100th Anniversary video. It was wonderful and a bit emotional to see and hear again the voices of some of our esteemed members who have passed away. The rest of the meeting went as intended, with members getting an opportunity to just converse in the spirit of fellowship. The overall response and comments were that it worked very well, and thus future dates will be announced. Cheers! Special Thanks to Mike Fortunato for propelling the concept forward, and then working hard with the IHC for putting the evening together!
June 11th Pig Roast Pulls Plug
The Italian Heritage Club and Mike Fortunato let us know that because of unexpected events involving the caterer, we are not able to have a Pig Roast at this time. We are working hard to have another “cookout” with a band hopefully in the near future. We will be issuing refunds by Monday. We will be in touch with those that paid cash to get the money back to you. We are so sorry about this as we would have loved to have partied with y’all!! We appreciate all the work that went into the planning, and look forward to another time!
Committee Preferences
President Bruce is reminding everyone to please send in your preferences for the committees you wish to serve on for the upcoming Rotary year starting July 1st. Here is a link if you need the two documents that were emailed on May 3rd - A description of committees and a preference sheet you can fill in. Thanks!
Speaker Schedule
June 10 | Speaker TBD
June 17 | Nick Lund, Maine Audubon, Migratory Birds
June 24 | Timothy Brosnihan, Victoria Mansion
President-Elect Bruce Jones will turn over the bell to these Past Presidents to guest host the following meetings: June 17th: Roxane Cole • June 29th: Ben Lowry
Club Executives President-Elect Bruce Jones 1st VP Dick Hall 2nd VP Patty Byers Treasurer Howie Herodes Secretary Michelle DiSotto Board of Directors Ellen Niewoehner, Mark Foster, Bob Clark, Roger Fagan, John Thompson Sergeant-At-Arms Dave Putnam Club Administrator Alice Alexander
The Windjammer is published online by
The Rotary Club of Portland, Maine.
Contributing Editors Bill Blount, Jake Bourdeau, Dick Hall,
Erik Jorgensen, Julie L’Heureux, Ben Lowry,
Tom Nickerson, Tom Talbott, Laura Young
4th Q Program Chair: Roxane Cole Managing Editor Tom Talbott Co-Production Alice Alexander
University of Northern Colorado with the goal of becoming an Air Force pilot. She spent her first three years in the Air Force as a human resources officer, attended pilot training, and held many roles on her path from B-1 Bomber pilot, to commander and Air Force senior leader. Jen explains that as a military pilot, flying is only part of the job. The majority of time is spent working in the traditional roles that keep any organization running like human resources, finance, logistics, training, operations, etc. Over the course of her 24-year Air Force career, she moved 14 times and had the opportunity to lead and follow at many levels and in diverse capacities. She says that her time training as a pilot instilled in her the value of accepting and providing constructive feedback and the importance of continuing to learn, improve, and adapt as situations evolve. Her transition from the Air Force to Maine provided another opportunity to apply these lessons as she took on a whole new challenge of building and running a nonprofit organization from concept to sustainability.
