Hello, Representatives, Faculty Advisors, and Distinguished Guests. Let me be the first to welcome you, officially, to AMUN 2020. As you know, we’re doing a lot of things differently this year, but our commitment to you and to the educational experience of AMUN is absolutely unchanged. I could not be more excited to be your Secretary-General for the 2020 AMUN Conference. It has been a tremendous pleasure to lead our staff this year, and we cannot wait to get started. 

My experience with Model United Nations began in college at the University of Central Missouri. I joined the club because the Faculty Advisor, my politics professor at the time,  dragged me aside during a club fair and said “I have this club. Just join it. It’s the kind of thing you’d like.” But, to be honest, I just wasn’t that into the research and content side of things. I was always lucky enough to be paired with a research and content wizard, so my role in the partnership was to be the delegation’s voice in the committee room. I always found myself making speeches and persuading others to sign on to our resolutions. It turns out, I really liked public speaking and the work of persuasion and negotiation that diplomacy requires. 

When I joined the AMUN staff in 2013, I was placed in the Committee Chair department. I don’t really know how I would have done in Home Government or as a Rapporteur. But wielding the gavel, taking minutes, and public speaking were right up my alley. For the next few years, I served on the dais team for several committees, including GA2, GA3, ESCAP and ECOSOC. Eventually I had the privilege to serve as the President of the General Assembly and as part of the Executive Committee. I feel lucky to have been part of some really incredible teams. 

And thank goodness – because being part of a strong team is the only way we’ve made it through this year. When I was announced as the 2020 Secretary-General at the end of last year’s conference, addressing you all through a virtual platform and moving AMUN online was certainly not what I envisioned. But this year threw all of us curveballs. And we made decisions and contingency plans and switched gears. And here we are. Over the next few days, there are going to be hundreds of people from all over the country and the world who log on to a brand-new platform and try to dothe real work of diplomats in a virtual environment. This is exciting, and I can’t wait to see what all of you can accomplish.

It’s going to be challenging — you all will have to navigate a new space, and new ways of interacting with each other and with your dais staff. It won’t be as easy to read non-verbal cues, and collaboration on documents might take a little longer. You’ll have to figure out how to work in groups of no more than 15 at a time. Calling out points of information or points of inquiry might not be quite as immediate. You’re going to work through all of this together. And the AMUN staff will be here every step of the way to help. 

Thank you for participating in AMUN this year.  Let’s get to work.