Leadership Outside of MIMA

[Michele Agosti]

As a stay at home parent, I have realized that volunteering is where I like to be. Over the years this has been in our community at West Mercer elementary PTA and through Girl Scouts. Over 2021-2022 I was West Mercer Elementary’s PTA President. Although there weren’t a lot of events that year due to the pandemic, our Board of Directors continued to meet monthly to discuss different activities. Updating the PTA website has been something I’ve also worked on to make it more user friendly and accessible as a resource for families at West Mercer. I worked with the Art Docent Enrichment Chair to update the PTA website with information for our Art Docent volunteers and update lessons on the Art Docent webpage. I also worked with Fundraising to make sure information about the programs and events we do raise money for. Last year I worked with our Yearbook chair to make sure our school yearbook was completed and a success.The 2022-2023 School year is more open and so our PTA is working hard to do all the events which we haven’t been able to have over the years. This year that started with the Ice Cream Social. Since we didn’t have a chair for Ice Cream Social I took on all the planning and implementation of this event myself. This year will be my last year as PTA President, so now I’m working on transferring much of what I’ve learned onto the next group who will hopefully take it on. I feel as PTA President it’s really important for me to not only support the leads for events but also be there as someone to help out and volunteer, so I go to and help out as much as I can with events the PTA puts on.I am also involved in the community as MI PTA Council Co-VP Advocacy. As Co-VP Advocacy I work with another person to run our Advocacy Committee Meetings once a month. At these Advocacy Committee Meetings all the Advocacy Reps from the schools on MI meet along with a School Board Rep and City Council rep to discuss legislative and advocacy issues on Mercer Island. Sometimes it’s discussion around a levy or perhaps legislative issues that have come up at the state level.Another role I do other than PTA President is lead a Girl Scout Troop of 5th grade girls. I have been the troop leader for Troop 40317 since they started in Kindergarten as Daisies. Our Troop has ebbed and flowed with some girls coming and going. We are currently at 9 girls again, but there is a solid group of the same 5 girls since they were 1st grade Daisies. Now they are Juniors and it is so much fun to have helped them grow and change over the past 6 years. I love helping to lead this group of strong and independent girls. Now that they are older much of it has moved from me planning the activities and meetings to them being the leads and parents just there to help out.The above often feels like far more than a full time job, but I really do love it and feel it’s my calling.