Monday, Oct 26, 2009    Text size: 

According to the association, the Leadership Redondo Beach program is similar to many other Chamber of Commerce leadership programs around the world; requiring a two year commitment, with the first year focusing on educating participants about the community while meeting with numerous city and business community leaders. The second year requires working on a group project that will benefit the city and residents of Redondo Beach.

During a ceremony at Wilderness Park, the graduates were honored with a congratulatory letter from Senator Diane Feinstein and Letters of Recognition from California Senator Jenny Oropeza and Assembly Member Ted Lieu. In honor of the graduation, Irvine and her classmates were also presented with a Letter of Recognition from Congresswoman Jane Harman and a Mayor's Commendation from the City of Redondo Beach at its City Council meeting.

Due to the water crisis in California, and Redondo Beach's additional problem of water run-off into the ocean, the leadership program chose to plant an educational Get Water Smart Garden in Wilderness Park as its group project. This garden includes native and water tolerant plants. Many in the community helped to bring this vision to fruition including the Eagle Scouts who built seating from logs so people could rest while enjoying the Zen-like garden. In addition to the garden, a fundraiser was held at Sea Lab and education material was provided to grade school children as well as information to businesses and residents.

"I spend so much time working on national and international online child protection issues that I felt it was important to give back to my local community," Irvine said. "Children spend too much time online, so it's important to enhance such a great place like Wilderness Park where they can learn about nature and even camp in the woods."

"While we were working in the garden, it was great to see so many families taking advantage of this great community resource," Irvine added. "It's a good feeling to know that the Get Water Smart Garden will be around for decades to educate future generations of Redondo Beach children."

Irvine started with ASACP in 2002 as Executive Director and was promoted to CEO in 2008. She has worked in business technology and association management for more than 25 years for companies including ADP, SDC and VIC. She advocates on behalf of online child protection in Washington and Sacramento, and participates in the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, Family Online Safety Institute, and the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. She belongs to the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and is a graduate of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce Leadership program. She has a BA in Human Development and Psychology from the University of Kansas.

Founded in 1996, ASACP is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating child pornography from the Internet. ASACP also works to help parents prevent children from viewing age-restricted material online with its Restricted To Adults (RTA) website label.