Ray Campbell
216 Prestwick Road
Springfield, IL 62702
(630) 258-0516 (voice or text)
[email protected]
Employment: Senior Digital Reliability/Accessibility Analyst, United Airlines, Chicago, Illinois
1. My name is Ray Campbell, and I am seeking the office of Second Vice President of the American Council of the Blind. I have served in this position for almost four years, except during the period of time after March 21, 2023, when Dan Spoone took over as Interim Executive Director, which moved me per the ACB Constitution into the role of First Vice President. Based on my current life circumstances, it’s best for me to run for my third and final term as Second Vice President at this time.
I wish to serve in this position to help continue moving ACB forward. I’ve served as Secretary of ACB, and I currently serve as President of both the Illinois Council of the Blind and the American Council of Blind Lions. I feel like I bring a thoughtful approach to matters which come before the ACB Board of Directors. I also want to continue seeing ACB move forward in its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. We have done some exciting things in this area, such as offering full Spanish translation of the DC Leadership Conference. I want to see more content made available in Spanish as well as continued efforts to encourage and assist more individuals of various backgrounds to seek leadership positions within ACB and our affiliates. I also want to continue my work to help the ACB Community do even more. The COVID-19 Pandemic was a lemon to all of us in ACB, across the country and around the world. ACB made lemonade out of this lemon with the development of the ACB Community. Community is one of the best programs we offer, but it can be even better, providing educational and other programming, and I want to help lead those efforts.
2. On the state level, I have been working with a coalition of representatives from several organizations, with many of them outside of the blindness and disability community to bring Accessible Vote by Mail to Illinois. In 2022, we successfully got legislation passed and signed into law that allows anyone with a print disability to receive, mark and verify their Vote by Mail ballots electronically. At the writing of this statement, we are very close to getting legislation passed which will allow these voters to return their ballots electronically. If we can get this legislation over the finish line, Illinois voters with print disabilities will have full access to the menu of options for voting that all other voters have.
Nationally, I am proud of the work the Resolutions Task Force has done to put the adoption of resolutions back into the hands of ACB’s membership where it belongs. The way ACB conducts its business has changed forever, thanks to our conducting two successful fully virtual conferences and conventions and a hybrid conference and convention. Our Resolutions Task Forces have worked tirelessly to make the process of submitting, debating, and adopting resolutions as easy and straightforward as possible, allowing ACB’s membership to make powerful statements on the important issues impacting people who are blind or visually impaired.
3. While ACB is in a good position as the chief influencer in the blind and visually impaired community, we always need to stay focused on the two ‘M’s, membership and money. Earlier, I mentioned the ACB Community and what great work it has done. While we have gained members through the community, we need to find ways to increase that number. Also, there are affiliates, especially state affiliates that have lost members during the COVID Pandemic, as they and their chapters were used to doing many things in person. I would like to work to get our special interest affiliates and state affiliates to partner with each other and either help identify and encourage special interest affiliate members who are not part of their state affiliate to join, or, to form special interest chapters which can then join with state affiliates. The Braille Revival League, Guide Dog Users Inc. and the Alliance on Aging and Vision Loss are three examples of affiliates already doing some of this. We need to look at training for state affiliates to get them active on social media to help them find and recruit members. And, we need to help our state affiliates with training in Zoom where needed to encourage them to do more hybrid or virtual activities.
Like any non-profit, money is always an issue for ACB. We’ve strengthened our development staff, and I want to work to make sure we continue maintaining a diverse financial base and make sure we have the resources we need to maintain the growth in staff we’ve seen. Also, as we are searching for a new executive director, strong development and relationship-building skills are a must for the successful candidate in my opinion.