New President's Blog, September 2026
Posted: 14 Sep 2026 by
Dear friends
Our outgoing President, Heather Hostetter
I would like to take a moment to thank the amazing Heather Hostetter for her phenomenal tenure as our first 'one year
president' of the IAFL. Heather started her journey on the Executive Committee in 2019, and has served as our Assistant Treasurer, Treasurer, President Elect, President and now becomes our Immediate Past President. She has worked alongside 4 Presidents.
Heather is the epitome of a 'difference maker'. The definition of a difference maker is a dedicated person who can make a big impact even with just a small action or a few words. This sums up Heather perfectly. She absolutely nailed her year in office.
Key for Heather was working to ensure that we are a welcoming and inclusive community, and she has done this fantastically. As well as attending our main meetings, she supported 4 and attended 3 of the ‘Introduction to Family Law’ conferences in the past year in Canada, the USA and Asia Pacific.
I want to take a moment to highlight two key things -
(1) to acknowledge the hard work that Heather and those supporting her put into organising the regional meeting in Kuwait that was scheduled for March 2026. Unfortunately this was not able to go ahead. I have no doubt that when the time is right this meeting will be absolutely superb; and
(2) you will have read in Heather's blog about Jens Scherpe's brilliant idea in Nairobi in September 2025 for several Kenyan family law students to attend a comparative family law course at his university in Denmark. Heather rallied everyone globally, and as an organisation we funded 5 students. This was a perfect example of Heather executing our three pillars of connecting colleagues, cultivating knowledge and creating solutions.
It takes time, effort, energy, and amazing support both in work and at home to enable anyone to be President of the IAFL, and Heather had this in bucket loads. She has made an indelible mark on our organisation that I am sure will last for decades to come.
Your new president
I can tell you that when I joined the IAFL in 2011, I certainly did not think that I would find myself in this position!
I know many of you, but for those who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, I was born in Holywood (Northern Ireland) at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles. Conflict and conflict resolution have been in my DNA since birth. I grew up the daughter of an Anglican minister, surrounded by people's stories, and even as a small child knew that everything that was shared in the family home was confidential.
I have been at Withers since 1997, and have been lucky enough to ride the crest of the wave of international family law in London since I qualified in 1999. Many of you will know about my love of languages. I studied French, Spanish, Greek and Latin at school, and au paired in Spain for 2 summers. While at university I had the chance to spend a year in Modena, Italy. I did not realise at that time the huge impact that year would have on my future career. I had many Italian highlights, including securing my contract training contract at Withers as the first Italian speaking trainee in 1995, and speaking at the Supreme Court in Rome in Italian.
My first conference was in Strasbourg chaired by William Longrigg, and I then planned five
European ‘Introduction to Family Law’ conferences alongside William Healing in Berlin, Madrid, Milan and Kyiv (twice, as the first one was pulled due to covid). I joined the Executive Committee in 2020 as Secretary, and step into the role of Global President after six years on the Executive Committee. It was very special to do this in Dublin, as it meant that many of my family were able to join in the celebrations, and more importantly meet my 'IAFL family'.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the 'traybakes'. Here are the recipes for the Top Hats, Caramel Squares, Fifteens and Biscoff Rocky Roads. A huge thank you to my two sisters-in-law, Nicola and Julie, as well as my best friend from school
Debbie, who baked all the goodies for us (when I suggested it to Heather I did not think we would have so many attendees!). Together then with them, Mudita Chawla and my 10 year old niece Rosa, we packed 469 bags of traybakes on the Sunday before the meeting.
Thank you also to my mum who provided baked goodies for the Leadership training session/Strategy meeting on the Tuesday before the conference and my brother Michael who enabled us to host our Executive Dinner at the RDS and our 40th celebration at the Aviva stadium.
My 3 pillars for my term 2026/2027 are as follows:
(1) Provisional African Chapter
It was absolutely joyous at our Board of Governors meeting to vote in the new provisional African chapter. This was the result of the work of many, many individuals over many years. I will build on the incredible work of those individuals to embed this provisional chapter into the fellowship of the Academy.
(2) In Brisbane in 2024, with the blessing of the Asia Pacific chapter, it was agreed that a key focus would be to expand the fellowship in India. I will lead our global Annual General Meeting there in Mumbai in September 2027. In the run up to this, we have already hosted a series of webinars with an 'Indian virtual base' to share the work of the Academy in India before we arrive, and a further one is planned in 2027.
The plan is to double the number of fellows in India from 8 to 16. This may not happen in my 12 month tenure, but I am very confident that it will happen shortly after we host our conference in Mumbai.
(3) The third, which is closest to my heart, is our well-being as family lawyers. We are at the coalface every day. We are literally attacked by our clients whether it is our inboxes, WhatsApps, virtual or in person meetings. I have seen first-hand what happens when someone suffers from adrenal fatigue. The demands that are put on us by clients, court deadlines, technology, our overflowing inboxes and, of course, the recent revolution AI (is Claude now drafting your letters for you via your clients?).
Over the next 12 months, I would love us to share and learn more about how we create boundaries and protect our own well-being. As importantly though, is that in our role as senior leaders in the international family law world we think about how we work with other professionals, as well as how we support our amazing associates and support staff who quite often bear the brunt of our clients trauma directly.
Here is a link to my speech at the Aviva and the awesome welcome video produced by Heather's son Lucas. Thank you to those who contributed!
Co-operation Ireland
As Heather said in her blog, I was a teenager who benefited from the work which Co-operation Ireland does. For any of you who have seen Derry Girls and the ‘cross community holiday’ episode - I was on one of those. James Stewart, Karen O'Leary, Grainne Fahy, Heather and I are absolutely delighted with the total that we as Fellows have collectively raised. I have received many lovely messages directly about the charity. We know that the Good Friday Agreement was almost 30 years ago. Having taken part in tourist activities with Fellows who came to Belfast before the conference, although Belfast is definitely changed, it takes a long time to recover from conflict. This is what we see with our clients every day.
IAFL Strategy
Along with William Sloan and Meighan Harmon, I led our strategy afternoon in Dublin. The Executive Committee in Kuala Lumpur agreed that we should have a strategy plan to take us forwards. Annie, Heather and I then prepared a draft strategy plan which was circulated to all chapter leadership, who provided written feedback before the meeting. This was then expanded upon in the in person session. We will now put together a summary of the session, action points and update the draft strategy plan for the Academy for 2027 to 2030, and present it to the Executive Committee in Fort Lauderdale for approval.
Your help please
In terms of immediate asks of you as Fellows, we currently have just under 8,100 followers on LinkedIn. It would be amazing over the next 12 months to increase our following to 10,000, so please do engage and share what we do as an Academy on LinkedIn.
Well-being moment
At Withers we have our Monday moment, where in rotation a team member shares photos of their weekend activities. In each of my blogs I will have a well-being moment, and would ask you to
share with us things that you do that bring you joy and take you away from your inboxes. On a Tuesday and Thursday morning at 6:45 AM, I do 6km with my fab personal trainer Alex. We have done this for six years, and normally it does not rain, but this week (probably because I have not done it for three weeks as I have been away) it poured - so we got absolutely soaked! As Heather said in her video, I love a sunset, so here are a few Irish sunsets for you all to enjoy – spot the IAFL fellow!
Finally, I commend 'The Art of Rest' by Claudia Hammond to you, which is based on the largest global survey of activities that support rest ever undertaken - completed by 18,000 people across 135 countries - a bigger version of the IAFL.
I look forward to the next 12 months and all that we will do together. My door is 'always open' so please do get in touch.
Best wishes
Suzanne
Suzanne Todd
President
