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Hello fellow members of Spokane Pharmacy Association! My name is Elizabeth Satterwhite and I’m the president of SPA for 2025. I’m honored to be the president of this organization at a time where we are experiencing growth in our membership, largely thanks to the efforts of our incredible board members. We have five new board members this year, and I’d like to tell you a bit about each of them. I also asked each of them to share a fun fact about themselves.

• Nathan Ramsbacher is a professor at WSU, and in this role splits his time between teaching and seeing patients at MultiCare Rockwood in the Valley. His area of expertise is in the management of diabetes. Nathan can speak some French.
• Janice Poe graduated from WSU in 2022 where she developed a love for serving the community through working at Rite Aid. Janice is an avid animal lover with 3 horses, 2 sheep, 2 dogs and several cats at her 10-acre property in Newman Lake.
• James Hendrix-Ward has been on the SPA board in the past and is a Pharmacy Operations Manager at NEW Health. James used to operate nuclear power reactors!
• Josh Ecksteen is a pharmacy technician at Deaconess, and before becoming a pharmacy technician got an automotive technology degree at SCC. He is fluent in Afrikaans, which is a language spoken in several countries in Africa.
• Maggie Byrd is a clinical pharmacist with Providence Medical Group. She went to pharmacy school at the University of Montana and stays very busy with her four children and being involved in the local community.

In January and February our board members met and had productive and fun meetings. Did you know that SPA has been an organization since 1921? All that time, the goal of SPA has been to support pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and students through education and advocacy. We support the education of all our members by having eight continuing education events per year, all of which are accredited for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Our Pharmacy Technician Day (once yearly in October) offers technicians an easy and fun way to complete CE including required topics. We also believe that sometimes the best relationships are born out of a non-professional setting – that’s why we have social events several times a year that allow members to network and have a good time. Last but not least, our Annual Meeting is an event where our members come together for a fun evening, and we recognize those who positively impact our community every day.

Now that it’s 2025, it’s hard to believe that we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century. With how much turbulence there has been in our world over the past few years, I think a lot of us are sometimes apprehensive about the future. I’m a big Star Trek fan, and one of my favorite Star Trek movies is ‘The Undiscovered Country’. In that movie, Captain Kirk says: “Your father called the future ‘the undiscovered country’. People can be very frightened of change.” This has always resonated with me – why are we so averse to change? Is it a superficial aversion – laziness, stubbornness? Or is it a deeper, subconscious product of human evolution? This is something I have been focusing on personally, and I have been learning that change is actually one of the things that feels like it gives my life the most meaning. I would like to encourage you as a member of our incredible pharmacy community to embrace change. The world around us is constantly changing, and healthcare is no exception. The Hippocratic Oath includes the following phrases – ‘I will accept the responsibility to improve my professional knowledge, expertise, and self-awareness’, and ‘I will embrace and advocate changes that improve patient care’. Let’s make 2025 a year of positive change, however that looks to you. I hope that SPA will continue to be a part of your professional life and be a resource that you can use to bring about positive change in 2025 and beyond.