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New World Van Lines congratulates Omar Avellaneda on completing his first IRONMAN competition at the Memorial Hermann IRONMAN North American Champion. The race was held on April 27th, 2019 in The Woodlands, Texas. Omar is a Class A Driver out of our Houston, Texas Service center and has been with New World since 2007.

The Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Texas consisted of a 2.4 mile swim in Lake Woodlands, followed by a 112-mile bike ride through east Texas, and concluded with a 26.2 mile run in The Woodlands.

Omar completed this monumental task in 15 hours, 52 minutes, and 39 seconds.

Congratulations Omar!

“Lift While you Climb.”

That was the theme of the Women in Tech event hosted by Google Cloud on March 8th, International Women’s Day, at Google’s Fulton Market Headquarters in Chicago.

Today, only 20% of positions in tech are filled by women, and only 2% of tech leadership positions are held by women. As we are currently living in a technological revolution discussions about women in tech are timely and important.

The keynote speaker Felecia Hatcher, named White House Champion of Change by the Obama Administration, teaches women “how to take up as much space as possible”. According to Felicia, most of women will miss opportunities they want because they’re dressed in overalls & look like work. What we want never looks like what we want it to. Whether it’s a career choice, a solution to a problem at work, or the next innovative idea, opportunities rarely fall in laps, and it is women’s responsibility to actively seek out and, sometimes, create our opportunities. When choosing a goal and creating a plan it is important to be specific in what you are trying to achieve. If you are not specific in your goals, you leave them up to everyone around you.

There was also a great panel lead by Caroline Rile, Field Sales Manager at Google Cloud with Jennifer Brown, K-12 Education Strategist at CDW, Cory Libgot, Lead Product Manager at DocuSign, Deb Coome, Sr. Director of Enterprise Data and Analytics at Ulta, and Andrea Chang, Technology Solutions Delivery at National Restaurant Association. Almost all of them started outside the tech field but pursued positions outside their comfort zone and found themselves in technology. They discussed the importance of surrounding yourself by your own “board of directors” and support group, whether it’s through networking, a professional woman in business group at work, or at meetups, taking a leap of faith and letting your voice be heard by making suggestions and bringing up ideas in the workplace. Deb Coomer’s daughter created and pushed through the maternity leave policy at her workplace, Jennifer Brown showed initiative by submitting suggestions about improving a program just one month into her new position.

Although many women suffer from imposter syndrome and find themselves fearful of climbing up, we can help each other by supporting each other, being a friendly ear, offering a word of advice, or just reminding each other of what we already have accomplished. We need to ask for and accept help more often. Fear of failure should not keep us in the sidelines but motivate us to create our next opportunity. After all, people won’t remember the mistakes you make, but they will remember how you handled them.

Here at New World Van lines our Innovation Team is 50% women. The Innovation Team has produced amazing software solutions internally that allow us to stay connected to our staff, drivers, clients and transferees with information that helps relocation less stressful. From our drive app that lets drivers on the road see their workload, schedules and gives them the ability to check in and checkout notifying transferees on site that we are here to help to our new operations program that allows our staff to see, plan and schedule all services needed for a move from one connected screen.

With a diverse and balanced team, we continue to think of and innovate new solutions by pursuing and creating our own opportunities. And that’s how New World keeps climbing, lifting all our departments with new innovative solutions on its way up.

Sasha Goldina representing NWVL

David and Patty Marx traveled to Panama City, Panama to represent New World International at the 50th Anniversary of the Latin America and Caribbean Movers Association (LACMA) from 2/17 to 2/21/19.

With more than 225 participants in attendance from around the world, the LACMA conference enables attendees to meet, engage, learn, and collaborate together.

The original Panama City was founded in 1519 but was destroyed by fire in 1671. The city was rebuilt in 1673 about 5 miles from the old city center. The people of Panama are friendly, helpful, and full of pride for their beautiful country. Today, Panama City is home to approximately 1.8 million people – nearly half of the country’s population – and has the feeling of a major metropolitan city, joining many generations and cultures together in one place.

While in Panama the entire group toured the Panama Canal which was amazing to see. The group was taken to the original lock system, which finished construction in 1914, and a recently opened expansion of the system, finished more than 100 years later, in 2015. The canal is now capable of supporting cargo ships carrying up to 13,000 shipping containers at a time and can cost upwards of $1,000,000 USD to pass through. Despite the cost, the canal is still a tremendous benefit to shipping companies, as it takes an average of 9 hours to cross the canal system, compared to two weeks of additional sailing time if traveling a route around South America. Time is money.

In addition to the canal tour, LACMA held a very nice dinner and celebration among the ruins of the Old City, Panama Viejo.

At business meetings the speakers talked about continual change in the moving industry, the impact data and artificial intelligence will have on our business, the power of computers, and how we all must embrace the change and change our companies to remain relevant.

It is important that New World attends these global meetings to improve our presence around the world, our ability to work with partners globally to better serve the needs of our clients and to grow our international business.

At the end of March, Edwin Ooms, David and Patty Marx will attend the FIDI meeting in Amsterdam, the Netherlands where they will also visit New World’s Rotterdam office.

To start off 2019, New World Van Lines is focusing on one of their core values: People. Three New World Employees completed multiple training session and spent many hours of their own time to became certified MAGIC® trainers.

Make A Great Impression on the Customer, also known as MAGIC®, is a 16 hour course that focuses on creating a culture based on exceptional service.  The program, which was created by Communico Ltd has been around for over 40 years, teaches employees to lead internal and external customer interactions, handle difficult situations, and make a great impression with every interaction.

Jackie, Meggan and Kori, our dedicated training team, have led the very first week of on-site training this week.  Over the next 10 months every employee including office, driver and mover will receive MAGIC training.

The managing director of NWI, Edwin Ooms, travelled to England, Belgium, Holland and France to meet with customers, network partners, and to see NWI’s new offices in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Rotterdam is home to the largest port in Europe and known as “the gateway to Europe” due to its deep-rooted trade history and robust logistics distribution system that feeds the rest of Europe.  On top of that Rotterdam was named European City of the year in 2015 for its tolerance, diversity and unique modern architecture.  Therefore, it is a very fitting location for our International office that serves our customers in the European, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA) time zones.  The new offices are in Rotterdam’s distribution area “Albrandswaard” and housed in the facilities of our partner KLG.

It was an exciting and productive trip filled with great visits to show our appreciation for the industry, develop new business and meet our NWI-EMEA team.

This year marks the fourth year NWVL has participated in Wreaths Across America. Wreaths Across America is an organization that coordinates wreath laying ceremonies at the grave of soldiers in the US, at sea and abroad. The tradition was started in 1992 by Worcester Wreath when they were left with a surplus of Wreaths during the holiday season. Worcester coordinated with Maine’s Senator Olympia Snowe to place wreaths on some of the older graves in Arlington.

In 2005 the wreath laying gained national attention and in 2007 Wreaths Across America was formed. Through the help of wreath-laying volunteers, trucking & shipping companies, fundraising and corporate donations, Wreaths Across America now places wreaths at over 1,400 locations. In 2014 Wreaths Across America was able to cover every grave at Arlington Cemetary.

New World is honored to participate and continue delivering Wreaths to remember and honor soldiers across America. To read more about Wreaths Across America and their mission to Remember. Honor. Teach., go to their website at Wreaths Across America.

The warehouse was filled with the sounds of laughter and joyous cheer at the New World offices today as the Holiday Luncheon was underway. With delicious foods and deserts, employees wearing their festive outfits and bright smiles gathered to enjoy the festive mid-week break together. The luncheon was also a welcome event to reconnect with some former retirees who came to visit and enjoy the holiday spirit with the company.

A costume contest was held with three prize winners – Regina from Operations in third, Steve representing Customer Service in second, and Julie, our dazzling holiday tree in first!

To conclude the festivities, a raffle for all of those who donated to the toy and winter wear collection was held. All donations will be donated to Connections for the Homeless in Evanston Illinois.

As the Holiday Season is in full swing, New World is adding extra light and cheer in the office with bright and festive decorations. In the spirit of spreading cheer, donations of gently used winter clothing, toys, and canned foods are being gathered for families in need.

And there’s still much to look forward to with a holiday luncheon and fun holiday outfit contest. We hope to see everyone’s cheery spirits lifted all month long!

As the holiday season approaches, New World kicked off the festivities by hosting something all employees were thankful for: a delicious potluck! Employees brought in their favorite signature thanksgiving staples and some fan favorites to gobble gobble down.

The NWCC went all out by decorating the space with warm seasonal tablecloths, balloons, and even fresh fall mums for an extra homey touch. Thanks to our New World family who work hard to ensure that hundreds of people can make moving to a new home easier every day!