A lovely tribute to SIOP's president-elect and a giant in the I-O world. Dr. Outtz is sorely missed but his legacy continues.

Imagine that your organization is in the process of selecting a new leader. Which attributes would be most important to you? If you are like most U.S. white-collar workers, you value honesty, integrity, fairness, competence, compassion, and a leader who is approachable and possesses good people skills. Indeed, results from the GLOBE study of leadership in 62 cultures finds that these attributes, along with being intelligent, informed, decisive, and foresighted are leader attributes that are universally valued. Conversely, being noncooperative, egocentric, nonexplicit, ruthless, and dictatorial are leader qualities that are universally viewed as undesirable (House et al., 1999; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004).

During his presidential address at SIOP’s annual conference in April, Steve Kozlowski challenged SIOP members to initiate efforts to make I-O expertise more accessible by linking members’ interests and creating projects that will facilitate advocacy and impact.

A new local I-O group, The Georgia Association for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (GAIOP), was officially incorporated as a not-for-profit professional organization on February 12, 2016. Our metro Atlanta-based group has a new face and new objectives; however, this is just the latest stage in the evolution of the I-O community in Georgia. This article is an account of how we got here, what we’ve accomplished, and what challenges remain. Because this leg of our journey is just beginning, we wanted also to describe our future aspirations in the hope that more professionals (and students) will want to join us. We hope that our story will be instructive for colleagues in other locations as they contemplate the costs and benefits of getting organized.

SIOP members have, over the years, expressed interest in more practice-oriented publications. For example, in the 2008 Practitioner Needs Survey, “Provide a practitioner journal or newsletter” was one of the top rated services SIOP could provide, with 87% of respondents indicating it would be valuable or highly valuable for I-O practitioner development (Silzer, Erickson, Robinson, & Cober, 2008). Similar results were obtained in the most recent 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey, where providing a practitioner journal or newsletter was ranked among the top three most valuable services SIOP could provide for I-O practitioner development among full-time, part-time, and occasional practitioners (Ferro, Porr, Axton, & Dumani, 2016). Similarly, in the 2011 Member Survey, when asked “What additional services would you like to see SIOP provide?” multiple comments centered on the same notion (e.g., “Practitioner-focused newsletter;” “Practitioner oriented publication; ” “A forum for best practice sharing of practitioners”; SIOP, 2011).