Board Transformation Initiative: What’s on the Horizon
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Happy New Year! January is a chance to look back at the previous year, map out the year ahead, and reassess our most meaningful long-term goals. While it has not been on New Year’s Day, for the past several years the AAE Board of Directors has annually done a self-assessment and used the assessment to look for ways to improve the way it governs our association. Through this annual assessment, Board composition and selection have been routinely identified as opportunities for improvement. As a result, the board decided over two years ago to address these areas for improvement resulting in the Board Transformation Initiative. A critical part of the initiative this past year was to get input from our members.
I want to give a special nod of recognition to our Special Committee on the Board Transformation Initiative:
Dr. Alan Gluskin, Chair
Dr. Mark B. Desrosiers
Dr. Katherine A. Divine
Dr. Keith V. Krell
Dr. Linda G. Levin
Dr. Sandra Madison
Dr. Mbachan C. Okwen
Dr. Rodney V. Scott
Dr. Denis “Chip” E. Simon III
Dr. Fiza Singh
Dr. Elizabeth Perry, Board Liaison
The committee members have worked with our consultants, Association Management Consultants, and gathered feedback from our members over the past several months. The result of their hard work was a revised board transformation proposal, which was discussed at our Town Hall meetings in November and December. Our Town Hall meetings were productive and constructive. I highly encourage all members who missed the meetings to listen to their recordings, posted on aae.org/aaeleads.
To everyone who has participated in our Board Transformation Initiative in some way thus far – whether you attended our 2021 General Assembly, took our survey last fall, or attended our Town Hall meetings most recently – thank you. Our iterative, non-prescriptive approach has allowed us to distill your feedback into the recommendations that will formally be introduced to you next month.
Ahead of our formal reveal of proposed Constitution changes, I want to give you a sneak peek here, which is based on the work completed thus far.
Our initial direction based on thoughts and discussion is as follows:
- Retain district directors – one director per district, nominated by Districts
- Add three at-large directors, nominated by Nominating Committee
- Eliminate the vice president position
- Officers elected by the Board of Directors
- District and at-large directors elected by General Assembly
- Authority to remove a director transferred entirely to Board of Directors
- Nominating Committee remains in its current form
- Board of Directors asked to charge a separate standing committee with development of a robust leadership pipeline for the AAE
I hope you’ll join me in a toast: to our health, to improvement, achievement, and success in the coming year. Happy 2022!