Welcome! A Note from Our New Local President

Photo by Todd Voltz

As the new president of our SAG-AFTRA New Orleans Local, I want to first welcome our new members. I would especially like to give a shout-out to the group of broadcasters who have joined this year substantially increasing the SAG-AFTRA presence at our Stations and in our market. Thanks to New Orleans Broadcast Director Herta Suarez and other members of the broadcast support team, Jennifer Peat and Tom Higgins, for their successful efforts!

I want to introduce you to our two new board members: Olga Wilhelmine and Robert Bennett. They join Charles Ferrara, Frank Peter Boimare III, George Sanchez, Ritchie Montgomery, Artemis Preeshl and yours truly to represent the SAG-AFTRA members of Louisiana and Mississippi.

I would like to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of our outgoing Local President Diana Boylston and Local Board member Lorraine Leblanc. It will be hard to fill their shoes! They have played major roles in our local and SAG-AFTRA, and we thank them for all of their hard work.

And last, but certainly not least, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and patience of Linda Dowell, our SAG-AFTRA assistant national executive director, locals. What would we do without her knowledge and talents? Thank you so much, Linda!

Finally, I want to thank you for letting me represent you and our local at the second SAG-AFTRA National Convention in early October. It was a great learning experience. There were great speakers, revelations of exciting prospects for the future — faster processing leading to faster receipt of residuals, big strides toward merging the health plans, etc. — and so much help from the national staff. They really oiled the machine! (George, one of our convention delegates, fills in a lot of details in his article later in the newsletter.)

John Wilmot, SAG-AFTRA New Orleans Local President

This was originally featured in the winter 2015 local newsletter.