Welcome to the Strategic UU Board training in The UU Institute. My name is Lillian Drab-Braddock. My pronouns are she/her/hers, and I'm a member of Congregational Life staff in the Southern Region as well as the co-dean of LeaderLab and The UU Institute. I'm the Reverend Renee Ruchotzke. I am also a co-dean of The UU Leadership Institute, and I serve our Central East Region and UUA Congregational Life staff, and I use she or they pronouns. 
You might be wondering what is a "Strategic Board" training compared to our "Board Foundations" training. Well, strategic boards are boards that have more generative conversations. They focus more on mission and vision, and how the church is serving its mission. Or you might be doing strategic planning, thinking about what the future might look like. You might be looking at the context in which your ministry is happening your community, what's going on. You might also be hosting conversations with the congregation. Perhaps your mission statement needs to be refreshed, or your covenant needs to be revisited. These "big picture" conversations are part of what the Strategic board's work is.
We've curated and created new video resources and activities for you to review and engage with. While of course we'd love for you to check out every single thing in the training, we understand maybe you have limited time to work with these resources. If that's the case, go in and look for the asterisks that mark the most important materials we'd like for you to engage with.
We've divided the training into five content modules: fiduciary agents, spiritual leaders, strategic thinkers, and change agents. Each of these have an arc of content that makes sense if you do it in order. But you're also welcome to bounce around. And then in the fifth module, we provide resources for team building, and storytelling, and goal setting for your live board retreats.
Thank you so much for being a part of the Strategic UU Board training. We truly appreciate you taking your personal time to learn how to be the best board member you can be. Thank you for your service to our shared Unitarian Universalist faith!