Note From Debbie

January 25, 2024

MLA is embarking on a new and exciting chapter as we prepare to be a fully remote workforce!

As many of you know, MLA’s office lease at 3410 Belle Chase Way in Lansing will be expiring at the end of June 2024 and the MLA board has made the strategic decision not to renew our lease. While the staff has been “mostly” remote since March 2020 when the pandemic hit, we will now be going “fully” remote. With five months left, MLA staff are working tirelessly in figuring out all the big and small details of this permanent move – leasing a PO Box, making address change requests, updating business cards, renting a larger storage unit, repacking and sorting conference supplies, preparing furniture to be sold or given away, shutting off utilities, updating our remote policy, and making sure the staff have everything they need at their home offices. What to do with our copy machine might be our biggest challenge…how will we survive without it?!

As we bid farewell to Belle Chase Way, we want to take a moment to reflect on the 10 great years we've had here and how we look forward to creating even more memories. Our current space saw many of you join us for sessions, committee and workgroup meetings or just stopping in to say hello and visit with MLA staff past and present. So much learning, tons of new ideas birthed and implemented, hundreds of candid conversations held, even more hard decisions crafted, and most important…so many friendships made. 

As we prepare to close and lock the physical doors, we have already found our stride in reaching you, our members, who serve in every corner of the state, through the virtual platforms we instituted during the pandemic. We will no longer be tied to a physical location and will be able to visit with you in your spaces on a more consistent basis. Our members have been instrumental in our success, and I'm confident that this move to fully remote will only enhance our collective achievements.

Here's to the next exciting chapter in our journey together!

Deborah E. Mikula
Executive Director