About the Greater Wisconsin Chapter

Serving all of Wisconsin

2023 President's Welcome

Welcome to the Greater WI EAPA Chapter webpage.

As Greater WI EAPA Chapter moves into 2023, we have seen many changes in the past year.  Some of those changes include the joining of the South Central EAPA Chapter with the Greater WI EAPA Chapter.  Our Chapter now serves all of Wisconsin. 

With these changes, we also welcomed a new Board of Directors.  I’d like to welcome to Jenniffer Price-Lehmann as our Treasurer, Kelly Nies as the Vice President; Sara Laskowski as Secretary; and Lori Wessel as the President.  We now have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee with Arlyn Gonzalez at Chair and a Membership committee to welcome new members and to assist with all questions regarding membership. We are always in need of new people and leaders to be a part of our organization.  If you feel you can contribute to the EAPA Chapter in some way, feel free to reach out to any of those on the board of directors to explore this. 

Our conference is fast approaching on May 4 & 5, 2023.  Find the 2023 EAPA Conference here.  The lineup of speakers this year is fabulous with many new speakers such as Ali Starr and Hadeel Hasan.  We also welcome back some of our fantastic speakers that we have had in the past such as Phil Chard, Rhonda Noordyk and Nikki Espil.  Topics at the conference range from self-care, working with leaders, spectrum disorders in the workplace, to working with Veterans.  The world of EAP is constantly changing with the demands of employers and the chronicity of employees and family members reaching out for assistance.  Let’s make this year’s conference the best ever!

As a board we have moved our website platform to StarChapter.  This platform will enable us to do things with our website that we were unable to do in the past such as keep better track of membership and registration for the conference and monthly meetings.  For those of you who are members of our chapter, we will be able to provide member only benefits by having you create a login on our new website. For those of you who are attending the conference, that will be the first experience you have with this.  If you want to utilize the discounted conference registration fee for members, then first you will need to create a login on the new website.  Feel free to check out the site.  It continues to be a work in progress with the new things it will help us to navigate. We believe this platform will allow us as a chapter to continue to stay better connected with our members, non-members and friends of EAP who want to stay connected with the world of EAP. 

As a chapter, we certainly look forward to the many new things in store for the coming year but also are looking forward to finding a leveling of some of the “new” and finding routine and a little more of the routine to what EAP was and is all about.  We anticipate having our first in person chapter meeting in October 2023 (location TBD).  We have not been able to offer this since 2020.  We will continue to have virtual meetings via Zoom with great speakers for each of the Chapter meetings.  We now offer up to 2 CEs and PDHs at our Chapter meetings. I’d like to acknowledge UW Madison’s Social Work Department for assisting us with the continuing education credits.  Without all of our wonderful sponsors, we couldn’t make this chapter such a success.

National EAPA is now offering many connection opportunities as well for EA professionals to stay connected and receive PDHs such as through their Wednesday Wellness, SAP connections, and Fridays with EAP in Healthcare.

Welcome to all in 2023!  Thanks to all for continuing to be supporters of EAPA and our local Greater WI EAPA Chapter!  I look forward to seeing you all on May 4 & 5^th. 

Sincerely,

Lori Wessel