It is a great honor to serve as the Supreme Directorum for Alpha Zeta Omega Pharmaceutical Fraternity for the 2025-2026 fraternal year. I am honored to have been elected and entrusted to lead this fraternity that has meant so much to me over the years. 

I have some high expectations for my administration this year. There are a few primary objectives I’m setting that we plan to accomplish. First and foremost, I’ve tasked the First Sub-Directorum Kelly Garrity with continuing with a communications schedule so we can have planned, detailed communications and ensure we meet the demand of everything going on without overwhelming our inboxes. Along with this will be work with our Electronic Communications Committee to resolve our emailing function so it is less manual labor for these emails to be sent and ensure we have our undergraduate communication strategy planned. Lauren Neese, as Supreme Associate Signare will be supporting to promote proper communication with her work on roster cleanup. 

As we continue to grow with our communications and new website, one of my goals this year is to ensure our website information is up to date and clean, specifically our candidate information as we will be continuing our push to reactivate our Beta chapter with our Recruiting Committee led by Beau Croxton and our Directors of Development Bailey Conkey and Matthew Buchfelner. Nicole DeFeo will continue as Signare and work off the base she has built this year to be even stronger next year. Nicole Cammarota has a really important job this year to ensure we are retaining our alumni and undergraduates. There were some great ideas
presented by the retention committee this year, so I’m hoping we can put these in place and build our alumni presence even higher. This will be in tandem with our new AZO Direct team of Carmen Witsken and Wilmer Gonzalez. Carmen will continue in the role this year to build the relationship of transition to Wilmer and allow Wilmer to start outreach with chapters and graduating fraters before they even graduate and move to alumni in order to promote 100% retention. Nicole will also be supporting our new Excheque Jace Swingle as they get accustomed to the role and finalize our transition of auxiliary funds. Jace this is a big role you are stepping into and we are here to support you every step of the way.

With each year, the Bellarum has been provided with more responsibility, and I’m excited to see Morgan McAulliff grow in this role and knock it out of the park. I’m very much looking forward to working with our undergraduate representatives: Kyle Grenier, Nicholas You, and Casey Huynh to make sure our undergraduates get the most value from Supreme as they can and continue to strengthen their experience and hopefully attendance at chapter events and our conventions. 

Chris Yanoschack has accepted the position of Chaplain for another year and we are looking to strengthen this role by adding in guidance and advice and having that someone to be there to talk to. There is no one that could be better at that than Chris. Carmen Witskin and Ali Burdick will put together an amazing AZOan next year. I have hopes with the Special Actions recommendation to have our AZOan editors work with our Associate Signare and Excheque for printing preferences and continue to promote environmental progress by considering the preference of our fraters without casting aside our traditions to celebrate the year coming to a close. Beau Croxton will be managing Good & Welfare for the year, Zach Gallieta will be the Sydney R. Rome Newspaper Cup chair, Hailey Guiariello will be my Historian, and Casey Bates will be our Sless Scholarship Chair—with Casey’s salesman skills I expect to see many undergraduates applying for and winning these scholarships next year. Jess Filippoli will continue chairing the CE committee and Zach will be joining the committee to support young healthcare professionals and Carmen will be rejoining to support ensuring we have the long term strategy set out for this committee to promote CE sessions and use our skills to their fullest potential. 

Darius Papulis and Bailey Conkey will lead our Professional Affairs and Mentorship activities. Adam Schweitzer will be leading Fraternal Mentorship. Jace will also chair Electronic Communications with Kevin Izzio, Krystal Riccardella and Hailey Guiariello supporting. Ali Burdick will chair Fundraising with Casey Bates supporting special fundraising projects at convention, Kyle Grenier will chair Advocacy. Casey Fisher will chair our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and Oli Horyn will chair Philanthropy Committee. Our other roles will remain with their previous leadership. 

This year, I have decided to continue our Philanthropy efforts in support of the Lustgarten Foundation. With so many Fraters, Friends, and Family being impacted by Pancreatic cancer, it remains an excellent philanthropic initiative.

Our elected and appointed officers and committees have a great deal to accomplish this year but I have no doubt with their skills and support they will continue to advance Alpha Zeta Omega and build our future. 

Cheers to a successful year!
Alyssa Schweitzer 
Supreme Directorum