by Kris Valerio Shock, LAA President & CEO

 

 

Springtime is typically an exciting time for LAA. The LAA Board of Directors is considering candidates to join the Board in the coming fiscal year, current Flagship and Neighborhood Leadership classes are approaching the end of their program year; while we're reviewing 60+ applications for the next Flagship class. We look to transitioning the current classes to alumni and welcoming a whole new cohort of dedicated community leaders. 

 

This particular springtime is bittersweet. Following nine years of dedicated service to Leadership Anne Arundel, Nancy Hartzell will be stepping down from her role as Director of Operations at the end of this fiscal year (June 30).

 

The "bitter" part of this bittersweet news is obvious to anyone who has worked with Nancy during her tenure with LAA. There is simply no replacing Nancy Hartzell. Over the last nine years, Nancy's mission-driven professionalism and unwavering commitment to serving LAA's mission and membership have become hallmarks of the LAA experience. Prior to stepping into my current role, I personally counted on Nancy to help me navigate the benefits of LAA Membership. Since joining Nancy on the Staff side six years ago, I have been deeply grateful to serve beside her, benefitting from the depth of her knowledge and steady dedication and commitment to the organization. Through changes in leadership and a global pandemic, Nancy has brought her optimism and can-do spirit to every session day, event, meeting and interaction.

 

The "sweet" part is that Nancy is not going away, rather she's looking forward to engaging with LAA as a Lifetime Member. As a graduate of NLA16 and FLG17, Nancy assures me she will remain involved and present, simply as a LAA Member instead of on staff. She has certainly earned that! 

 

So that leads me to my request for help. We are very fortunate to have Nancy on staff through the end of this fiscal year, and we would very much like to hire an Operations and Membership Manager (Part-time, 25 hours/week) within the next several weeks so that they will have the opportunity to work directly with Nancy for several weeks before she steps down. The job description for the role is available here.

 

Our greatest connections consistently come from the LAA community, so my request is that you share the job description with your network and ask anyone interested in learning more, to contact me directly.

 

On a related note, we're working to confirm a budget including a second full-time position for LAA at the start of the new fiscal year (July 1). The full-time Director of Programs and Events job description will be available by next week. While filling the part-time role is our top priority so they have the benefit of overlapping with Nancy, we expect to begin interviews for the full-time role toward the end of May.