After being a steady member of the California Council on Teacher Education (CCTE) for 14 years as a faculty member, program director, department chair, associate dean, and even as a mother, Cynthia Grutzik was nominated to run for President-Elect of CCTE in 2010. She was in a unique situation as she came into the CCTE presidency: two women had been elected as president-elect in a tie that held even when more members went to vote. Since Grutzik was starting a new position at California State University, Long Beach, Andrea Whittaker (then at San Jose State University) agreed to serve the first term as president-elect. Whittaker accepted a new position at Stanford University working with a national program of teacher assessment and her workload grew significantly, so they switched positions in the line-up, and Grutzik finished out the two-year term as president-elect, joining Magaly Lavadenz (Loyola Marymount University) and Jim Cantor (California State University, Dominguez Hills) on the leadership team. Herein, Grutzik discusses three areas in particular that she learned a great deal about during her presidency: (1) the investment so many make in CCTE; (2) the unique role of CCTE in California; and (3) the strengthening of CCTE's organizational capacity.