In early 2005,  Izel Obermeyer OTR who was then VIce President of the NY State Occupational Therapy Association (NYSOTA)  as well as a Westchester County Occupational Therapy approached me about working with her to do something different with the Westchester district''s turn at  hosting the annual conference ot  NYSOTA.  She asked me to work with her to develop  a vision for the state association  to host an  occupational therapy conference at the United Nations.   We worked over a two year period to develop a vision that Izel could sell to the United Nations and then worked to engage  local, state, national and international partners within and outside the OT profession to collaborate with us in creating a conference that would be worthy of our setting.  I am very proud of what we were able to create and implement.  I am also very proud of the role that   Mercy College faculty and students played in the conference.  Mercy College OT faculty, alumni and students served as leaders and participants of all key conference committees.   Attached is the program that we developed, Izel and my opening statement to introduce the conference, and a writeup on the conference.