How’s this for welcoming a new member? Laura Burke, a compliance coordinator at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, joined the Health Care Compliance Association in March. In July, she’ll be on the cover of HCCA’s magazine.

HCCA and its sister association, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, hit a combined membership total of 15,000 for the first time when Burke joined. Burke will grace the front of SCCE’s magazine in July, as well.

“We’re a membership organization. We start and end with the members,” says Adam Turteltaub, CCEP, CHC, vice president of membership development at SCCE/HCCA. “Let’s keep the focus on them and what their role is and the fact that they’re the ones making the association what it is. What better way to celebrate the milestone than to focus on the individual who put us across the next line?”

The associations’ magazines feature members on the cover of every issue, though usually newsmakers or thought leaders in the industry. At several membership milestones in past years, though, the covers have featured members who might not have otherwise found themselves there.

“Usually when we reach out to people on these, they’re excited, they’re flattered,” says Turteltaub. But, being in corporate compliance, “they do have to check with someone internally to make sure they can do it.”

HCCA and SCCE are young, as associations go, founded in 1996 and 2004, respectively. Turteltaub says the focus on people in their premier publications bolsters the sense of community the organizations are working to build.

“It’s especially important for a relatively new profession for people to understand that it’s growing and strong and to see who their peers are,” he says. “It’s a great way to keep the focus on them.”

Laura Burke is the latest milestone member of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics/Health Care Compliance Association to land on the cover of the associations’ magazines. (Cover image courtesy of SCCE/HCCA.)