Report from The Young Professionals Council
Chairperson and committee
Representative for Europe: Syeldy Sasongko (The Netherlands), also Chair until August 2023, Cvetanka Kochovska (North Macedonia) from August 2023
Representative for Western Pacific: Eunike (Nysa) McGowan (Australia/Sweden) Secretary until August 2023, Chair (from August 2023)
Representative for Western Pacific: Secretary Jian (Nikita) Ou-Yang (China) from August 2023)
Representative for Eastern Mediterranean: Nour Almozain (Saudi Arabia)
Representative for South-East Asia: Saikat Mandal (India/UK)
Representative for Northern America: Antoine Lewin (Canada)
Representative for Latin America: Carla Dinardo (Brazil) until June 2023, Jannison Ribeiro (Brazil) from June 2023
Representative for Africa: Lilian Boateng (Ghana) until June 2023, Abiy Ambaye (Ethiopia) from June 2023
Meetings and Teleconferences
The Young Professional Council (YPC) continue to meet virtually monthly to update, discuss ideas and plan activities for the young professional community. This included the Need Assessment Survey distributed in January 2023.
In July 2023, an open-house meeting was hosted for young professionals around the world to discuss their ideas for the future of the YP community in “Community Talks”. The YPC presented the results of the needs assessment survey and divided into breakout rooms according to region to allow attendees to meet their regional representative and an opportunity for discussion.
Activities during the period
This reporting period, the YPC thanked Lilian Duku (Africa), Carla Dinardo (Latin America) and Syeldy Sasongko (Europe) for their contributions to the Council. Syeldy extended her period as Chair, to lead the Council into the vision of a global YPs community and chair the YPC’s first ever open-house meeting in “Community Talks”.
With the return of in-person ISBT congress, the YPC continued to provide opportunities for young professionals to network with experts in the field with the Young Professionals Breakfast and Legendary Leadership Workshop with Judith Chapman at ISBT Gothenburg 2024. A WhatsApp group for young professionals was launched at Gothenburg 2023, which facilitated for young professionals to meet, get updates, ask questions about various events, and get answers/help. Even after the congress, the WhatsApp Gothenburg group remains active with young professionals sharing opportunities, interesting papers and guidelines.
The YPC welcomed new representatives Jannison Ribeiro (Latin America), Abiy Ambaye (Africa) and Cvetanka Kochovska (Europe). Jannison has joined social media with Nour Almozain (Eastern Mediterranean) and together they continue to spur exciting ideas for posts that engage the young professionals community online. Our new representatives were quick to work with Abiy coordinating a record-breaking number of attendees at the Young Professionals Breakfast at Cape Town 2023 and Cvetanka on board to coordinate the breakfast at Barcelona 2024. The positive response for the Legendary Leadership Workshop in Gothenburg 2023 has motivated the YPC to host the same workshop for Barcelona 2024.
Other than congresses, the YPC continues to seek a better understanding as to what young professionals seek from the council, and possibly ISBT in general, in the Needs Assessment Survey distributed in January 2023. The data was presented by Syeldy and Antoine in “Community Talks” and a manuscript is currently being prepared for the dissemination of results. Additionally, Antoine has led the YPC in the publication of a Vox Sanguinis paper which reported perspectives on how blood services manage the tight balance between supply and demand of blood products.
Lewin A, McGowan EC, Ou-Yang J., Boateng LA, Dinardo CL, Mandal S., Almozain N, Ribeiro J., Sasongko SL. (2024) The future of blood services amid a tight balance between the supply and demand of blood products: Perspective from the ISBT Young Professional Council. Vox Sanguinis. Early view.
The YPC also continue to host Live Journal Clubs (LJC) with Nysa and Saikat hosting in December 2023 and March 2024, respectively. Our next LJC is planned with Antoine, who has agreed to host a bilingual live journal club in French and English.
