Events

Free Ice Cream Sundaes

Presentation & Prizes 5:15pm

Join us for a new member gathering to welcome you to the Overland Park Rotary Club!

Brad Stratton and Bill Flohrs will be hosting a drop in lunch at the Boadmoor Bistro located at 8200 W 71st St, Overland Park, KS 66204 from 12-1PM. This is run by the students from the Shawnee Mission School District. $10 for a Turkey sandwich on multigrain bread, lettuce and tomato and. a bag of chips. We need to RSVP, so let Bill know. bflohrs@gmail.com.

These drop in lunches are always fun, informal, and help support these kids that are trying to learn skills in the restaurant business.

Jennifer Berquist joined the Kansas Athletics staff in February 2002 as assistant director of the Williams Educational Fund after serving as the compliance auditor assigned to Kansas Athletics for four years. She was later named associate director of the Williams Fund, associate athletics director/Williams Fund in May 2010 and later associate athletics director/development. In May of this year, Berquist shifted to a part-time internal role.

A native of Marion, Kan., Berquist earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from KU in 1994 and a master’s in education with a sports administration emphasis in 1996. As a student, she worked four years in the KU sports information office, one year as the Big Eight Conference service bureau intern and then full-time at Kansas Athletics as publications coordinator in 1995-96. Berquist had a brief stint as assistant sports information director at Kansas State in 1996-98 before returning to her alma mater.

A 2001 Leadership Lawrence graduate, Berquist is a member of Women Leaders in Sports and NAADD (National Association of Athletic Development Directors) and has served as a Big 12 Conference representative for NAADD. She is a past president of the Lawrence Rotary Club as well as the Lawrence Schools Foundation board. Currently, Berquist is the Paul Harris Society Coordinator for District 5710 and is her club's PolioPlus chair. She is also a member of Chapter JC (Lawrence) within the P.E.O. Sisterhood.

Berquist and her husband, Craig, have two children, Landon (brokerage associate at Foundations Commercial Real Estate) and Claire (University of Nebraska-Kearney sophomore), and they reside in Lawrence.

Maria Wilson will talk with us about Rotary’s main humanitarian goal - ending polio worldwide, and PolioPlus, the program that supports these efforts.

Maria has been a Rotarian since 1997.  She is a Past-President of Topeka South Rotary, and has actively participated in many service projects including making "How to apply for housing" videos for a Rotary program that helps women coming out of incarceration, traveling to Guatemala to install water filtration systems and cook stoves, and helping with the D5710 cleanup day following the Joplin tornado.   Maria is now the D5710 PolioPlus Chair.

Maria's first career was in not-for-profit management, working to help elders stay safely in the home of their choosing.  Maria now works in Real Estate Investment and Property Management, primarily in the Topeka housing market. 

Maria and her husband, Mike, who is also a Topeka South Rotarian, live in Topeka.  Their three adult children and their spouses and four grandsons all live close by.  Maria and Mike spend their time enjoying the grandsons, scuba diving, and traveling.