Students are an essential part of our scientific and professional community since they will become the professionals and the scientists of the future. They will be the future. And, as IEEE, we need to provide them knowledge, tools, and services to support them in building their personal knowledge, skills, and career, complementing and extending the fundamental, applied, and advanced knowledge and the experiences provided by the universities.

Entrepreneurs are a group of industry people with specific needs, mainly directed to develop and support entrepreneurship skills and competences. The will be one of the essential and creative engines of industry innovation and the economic development. They are the ones who are taking the challenge of using or developing new technologies and applications and aim to create new agile companies.

Life Members are a vital valuable part of our scientific and professional community: they are the living knowledge and experience of our community. They can give an extraordinary contribution in building the community and the future, not only as scientists, technologists, and managers, but also as knowledge sources and role models.

There are several other geographical areas in which IEEE is not yet providing enough services and support to the scientific and professional community, e.g., some areas in south-east Asia, India, Middle East, central and south America. IEEE can do much more also in these areas. Everybody should see IEEE as his/her home. Nobody should be ever left behind.

Our colleagues in Africa constitute one of the largest scientific and professional communities that is still significantly underserved by IEEE. We started to converge efforts to address this situation, but there is still a lot to do. Africa has a huge potential for economic development: technology can greatly contribute to boost the future of people in this continent.

I believe that it is essential to expand the presence, visibility, and roles of women in our scientific and professional community as well as in IEEE. First of all, they are still not present in the engineering profession and in the various roles as they are in the overall workforce and the society worldwide. Second, diversity of views and thinking are essential to see problems and opportunities in a more holistic way and find better approaches.