The Board regrets to announce the resignation of Julia Beck, effective immediately. Julia, who was elected to the Board in 2011, went on hiatus in September 2012 and had hoped to return at the beginning of this year, but personal and professional commitments outside the OTW made this impossible. An OTW staffer since 2008, Julia was the founding chair of the Internationalization & Outreach committee, and we will miss her deep commitment to and passion for that cause within the OTW, and the OTW itself. Thank you, Julia, for all your hard work and support over the past four years; you will continue to remain an inspiration to the rest of us.
After discussion, the Board has decided not to appoint anyone to fill Julia’s seat for the remainder of the 2013 term. We have clarified our policies on what to do in the (unlikely) case of a tied vote on the Board, and are concerned that appointing someone to the Board now would negatively impact the pool of potential candidates for the 2013 Board election.
The Board remains committed to a nine-seat Board with three seats up for election each year. As part of this commitment, the Board has formally set the term of recent appointee Maia Bobrowicz to two years to match that of Cat Meier. They effectively are part of the same “cohort” of seats as Nikisha Sanders, who was elected in 2011, and their seats will be up for election in 2014. Julia’s seat will count as part of the same cohort as Kristen Murphy and Ira Gladkova, who were elected in 2010 and whose seats are up for election again this year.
Board attrition remains an issue of concern to the Board both personally and professionally. It is one of our continuing goals to do everything we can to reduce this attrition, and we are confident that these decisions will help in that effort.