You’re Invited to Visit ILA’s New Office Space
After a year-long process, the ILA is proud to announce that we’ve completed our move to our new office space! Get out your address books and make note. ILA’s new address is: 8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite #1010, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA.
ILA Chief Operating Officer, Shelly Wilsey shared, “Between the global conference in Brussels and the move at the end of October, it’s been a whirlwind month. I’m grateful to ILA’s Office Manager, Jen DuMars, who supported the staff and helped coordinate the move.”
Conveniently located just across the border with Washington, D.C., Silver Spring is a growing, vibrant, diverse, metro-accessible community. From our windows on the 10th floor, you can see the crane-filled sky of Silver Spring and the U.S. capital on a clear day. While we can no longer see the Discovery Building from all of our windows (always a treat during Shark Week), our view is now graced by the changing lights of the elegant, DNA-themed, pedestrian bridge of a local biotech company.
As we know from Arja Ropo and Perttu Salovaara’s book Leadership in Spaces and Places, location matters for more than real estate sales. In an interview on the book, they shared with us, "[D]ifferent types of material and technological gadgets seem to guide our actions…. Office spaces and computer programs seem to have taken on leadership functions.... The whole issue of materiality seems to be overwhelmingly in our lives and we think that means that leadership also needs to be viewed in a different way. Mainstream leadership research has been leader centric and generally research and practice tends to focus on the rational or cognitive aspects of leadership. But, in reality, it is never just the rational side of us that is present at work; we are there as whole human beings.... [We need] a more aesthetic approach to organizations, an aesthetic leadership approach that acknowledges that leadership, when it takes place in practice, is not only a rational faculty, but includes emotions, intuition, experience, sense of space, and, if you like, embodied knowledge."
Cynthia Cherrey echoes this, remarking, “The ILA sought to find or design new office space that created a responsive work environment to serve our members and to support our staff. This space does just that. Containing leadership spaces for privacy and openness, it incorporates individual offices with interactive spaces for innovation, collaboration, and serendipitous conversations. It also gives us function and flexibility, which allows us to adapt spaces for present evolving needs and for future growth.”
Shelly concludes, “We worked hard to find the right space at the right time at the right cost. We have excellent neighbors, including the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce and Global Communities. It’s going to be a great place for us to grow, with plenty of space for interns as well. We look forward to the years of passionate conversations and work ahead.”
The ILA staff has risen to the challenge of reconceiving our workspace and has worked hard to create a welcoming home away from home. We invite you to drop by for a visit the next time you’re in the DC metro region. Contact us at our same phone number: +1.202.470.4818.
For more information, contact:
Debra DeRuyver
Communications Director
International Leadership Association
dderuyver@ila-net.org | 1.202.470.4818 x102