Opening Statement from Board of Directors

Treasurer Nan Dixon read an opening statement on behalf of the Board of Directors at the February 9, 2020 Board of Directors Meeting. The full text is below. 

Thank you to all the members who have joined us today. We appreciate and share your passion for the organization. We know this has been a tumultuous time, and a painful one, for all of us but particularly our members from marginalized communities who have been hurt by the association's failure to make RWA a safe and inclusive place for you.

As our Interim Executive Director Leslie Scantlebury said last week, that stops now.

To reach this goal of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive RWA, we need to start from the foundation to build something stronger and better. Our goal as a Board is to identify the cracks in the foundation. The audit firm we have retained will be giving us recommendations for how we can improve our ethics process. We are close to retaining a DEI consultant who will be working with the Board and staff to look at our policies, procedures, programming, and events, as well as helping us design a process for appointing an interim president that will include input from our members as much as possible.

We want to have this work in place so when we transition to the next Board in September they will have a strong foundation to build from. As a reminder, elections will take place in August, and all Officer, Director, and Advisor positions will be open for election. We encourage anyone who has interest to visit our Elections page on the website to find out how to run.