Although no other technology association can match IEEE’s brand, membership and knowledge base, our organization has struggled to put itself on a winning growth trajectory. Healthy revenues have been drained into operational deficits brought through questionable corporate initiatives and closed meetings. A lack of financial transparency has left our units with little control over their revenue-to-expenses ratio, stifling their productivity. Our industrial membership dropped from 67% to 47% since 2000. With declining retention of graduating students now at 38%, our membership is aging. Finally, though we’ve increased the number of products, returns look lacking as our members report low satisfaction.

To re-gain the upward momentum, with focus on members, transparency and technology, as President I’ll launch forward-thinking initiatives while embracing the reform commenced by recent leadership to:

• Redefine membership value to meet the needs of our members from different regions, age groups, career objectives, and industry segments.
• Develop a useful, understandable, financial model that eliminates wasteful and duplicative spending while sparking creativity.
• Leverage technology and design-thinking to deliver personalized services and products that have impact and relevancy for our members and paying customers.
• Initiate a landmark project to transform IEEE from today’s traditional ‘technical paper provider’ to a ‘knowledge provider’. The new AI-driven IEEE Explore will deliver highly-processed, filtered, on-demand knowledge be it designs, algorithms, technical solutions, products, standards, even answers to questions. As a neural networks pioneer, I know this will establish the new ‘AI-aligned-IEEE’ and bring new revenue streams and opportunities.