Northeast Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association Blog

From the Desk of NCHPBA President, Joe Holland

8 November 2023

Hello North Central HPBA Members,

I hope you have all had a great start to the new season. Hopefully the early snow helped many of you. We have quite a bit going on and a lot of great things happening here in NCHPBA! First, we’d like to congratulate Karen Teske-Osborn on her retirement! KTO has given NCHPBA 27 very dedicated years, and we all wish her the best of luck and health as she enjoys some well-deserved time off. KTO, thankyou for all you have done for NCHPBA and our industry!

The NCHPBA board has hired Karen Arpino to be the new Executive Director of the North Central region. Karen comes to us from industry, she is the Executive Director for the Northeast Region which is made up of New England and New York. She went to college at Purdue University and spent quite a bit of time in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa during those years. Although she admits it’s been over 20 years since she has been to this part of the country, she is very much looking forward to visiting us soon, in fact, visiting both Dakota’s and enjoying a Bloody Mary at Sobelman’s Bar in WI are both on her bucket list!

Along with this transition, we’ll be introducing electronic invoices and the option for credit card payments through our brand-new website, northcentralhpba.org. Please check it out! You’ll be able to renew or join online, register for events, and keep up-to-date on all the industry news in our region and nationally.

Speaking of events:

Save the date for our annual event at Chula Vista, May 19-21, 2024. We are looking forward to seeing you all there. But we hope to see you at HPBExpo in Nashville, TN, Feb 13-15, 2024, first!

We’ve also updated the NCHPBA social media pages, please “like, follow and share!” We’ll be posting here regularly throughout the week, and we’d love to share your business news here too. Send us funny pics, job listings, new hires, milestones, success stories, new NFI certifications, or information on events you may be hosting. We’ll post them for you!

• https://www.facebook.com/NCHPBA
• https://twitter.com/NCHPBA
• https://www.instagram.com/nchpba/

There are a couple of housekeeping items of note.

• New email address: karpino@northcentralhpba.org – please add this address to your contact list to ensure you receive NCHPBA communications.
• New NCHPBA phone number: 978.440.0344
• New NCHPBA Mailing Address: NCHPBA, PO Box 27, Sudbury, MA 01776

Keep a lookout for our newsletters, invoices, HPBExpo information, Government Affairs updates, Save-the-Date information and more!

Enjoy the season, and feel free to reach out to Karen, any of the board members, or me with any questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Joe Holland 

President, NCHPBA