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<< back to the 2004 archive listing << Food Protection Trends COMMENTARY from the executive director “Without great leadership from your Executive Board, both present and
past Boards, we would not be the leaders in “Advancing Food Safety Worldwide” The election results are complete and Gary Acuff from Texas A&M was selected to become the next Member of our Executive Board. Gary’s term will commence upon completion of the Awards Banquet on August 11 in Phoenix. The vote count was finalized at the end of March and Gary was ready for action well before his term is scheduled to begin. A long-range planning session was scheduled in conjunction with the April Board meeting and Gary was able to attend and contribute significantly to the discussions. This month’s column focuses on the time and dedication of our Executive Board Members. In addition, I will share some details of a planning session held at the April Board meeting. First off, a candidate for Secretary commits to serving the Association over the next five years when they agree to being a candidate for office. This is a huge commitment and one that should be appreciated by all IAFP Members. To think, Members (and their employers) are willing to donate their time and effort to help lead this Association into the future is quite humbling. We want to thank David Golden from the University of Tennessee for being willing to stand for election to the Executive Board. David is a past Chairperson of the Program Committee and has been very involved in IAFP over the years of his Membership. We look forward to David’s continued involvement and are appreciative that he was more than willing to contribute to IAFP on the Executive Board over the next five years. That is truly a tribute to his dedication to IAFP! Typically, there are four Board meetings per year. These may range from a multi-hour teleconference to a meeting taking up to three days of a Board Member’s time. In addition, there are normally many hours spent prior to a Board meeting studying materials provided to allow for efficient discussion of agenda items. Often times, there are issues that arise between Board meetings that need input from all Board Members. Much of this discussion can take place via E-mail, but some issues require additional teleconferences to make decisions. From this you can see, a Board Member’s job is never done. There are always more issues to discuss, decisions to be made and direction to be given to make IAFP the strongest it can be! I mentioned that we held a planning session at the April Board meeting. All Board Members and all staff were present along with Gary Acuff and Stephanie Olmsted will also join the Executive Board as the Affiliate Council Chairperson as of August 12. The full-day session produced an abundance of ideas and directions to take. By the end of the day, our facilitator had our focus narrowed to five categories of projects. Some of the categories had more than one goal to accomplish. Before the day ended, we were able to identify various tasks associated with working toward achieving our goals. Future columns by our President or me will give additional details about the results of the planning session. There are many exciting goals included and we look forward to sharing the complete report with you! As you can see, our IAFP Board Members dedicate a lot of their work time and personal time to helping to lead the Association down the right path to the future. For that we want to thank Paul Hall, Kathy Glass, Jeff Farber, Frank Yiannas, Anna Lammerding and Steve Murphy; our current Executive Board Members. We also want to thank Gary Acuff, Incoming Secretary and Stephanie Olmsted, our Incoming Affiliate Council Chairperson for the time they dedicated during the April Board meeting and planning session. Without great leadership from your Executive Board, both present and past Boards, we would not be the leaders in “Advancing Food Safety Worldwide.” |