misses, incidents, and why the public should care about the safety of highway workers. It will also incorporate educational briefs from frontline workers to inform the public of safety measures used in roadway work zones and the importance of awareness as they’re driving. Future evolutions of this initiative could push enhancements to driver education programs that include more robust content on navigating a work zone safely. The initial goal is to create media content to reach family, friends, and broader networks through social media, provide easy-to-access, digestible content for policy and decision-makers, and ultimately create a unified position on highway worker safety that will drive meaningful change in driver behavior and policy. LEAD members are developing a toolkit to facilitate interviews with employees of member firms to build a content library. We need your help, so please contact us if you have ideas, know someone who should be interviewed, or can offer any other assistance. The goal is to launch an inaugural ad campaign during the 2025 National Work Zone Awareness Week (April 21–25). Finally, LEAD is working on developing a mentorship and ambassador program. The mentorship program allows the VAA Board of Directors to mentor LEAD members, providing valuable insight into professional development, overcoming challenges, technical expertise, and being a good steward of our amazing industry. The ambassador program will allow LEAD members to welcome new members to the association and help connect different people from those firms with all the various resources the association offers. This is a particularly exciting development for me, as I believe it creates a network and system that will not only sustain our industry and the association but will allow an even greater exchange of ideas, making the industry more innovative and resilient than ever. As you can see, LEAD is passionate about its mission. Starting a group like LEAD is no small task: the committee has built a foundation to keep it grounded and established a vision to guide it forward. It’s identified meaningful initiatives to allow it to start making a difference while staying true to the founding principles and incorporated elements of sustainability and resilience for the group centered around connecting the great people in our industry. None of this would have been possible without the support of the industry leaders who initiated the program or the great people serving as LEAD’s inaugural members. Every time I work with this group, I’m impressed with the dedication and talent that it’s blessed with. Thank you all for your help and support! And for those who want to get to know some amazing people, learn about what we’re doing, and perhaps even get involved, find us at any of the upcoming VAA events! LEAD: WE’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT OUR MISSION VAASPHALT.ORG 29
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