by Melanie Brunson
The following announcement was posted to ACB's e-mail lists on September 5th.
When ACB's new administration took office in July, one of the tasks that was handed off to our new president was assisting with the continuing search for a director of advocacy and governmental affairs. This search was necessitated by the resignation of Eric Bridges in July.
As president Kim Charlson and I began reviewing applications for this position, we also had several discussions about how the job itself has changed over the years. We started to realize that this might be a good time to redefine both the job duties, and our expectations of the successful candidate, in order to reflect those changes. As a result of these discussions, we have altered the focus of the position to reflect the fact that government is only one of the entities this individual needs to interact with on behalf of ACB. Relationships with representatives of business, industry, ACB members, and the general public, as well as government officials, policy makers and agency staff, have become essential to success in this position. In acknowledgement of this fact, we have restructured the responsibilities of this position and have changed the title to reflect these multiple new roles as director of external relations and policy.
Since Eric Bridges was the person who was largely responsible for broadening the reach of this position over the course of his tenure in it, we decided to seek his input on the approach we wanted to take. To make a long story short, Eric decided to offer himself as a candidate for the new position! He had some serious competition, and we thank all of the other candidates who provided it, but the fact is, Eric has had a stellar record at ACB, so we found his offer to be one we couldn't refuse! We are pleased to announce that Eric will be returning to ACB as director of external relations and policy on Sept. 9. We look forward to working with him to build on what we started under his leadership, as well as forge new alliances to advance ACB's advocacy and public policy agendas. Please join us in welcoming Eric Bridges back to ACB!
Eric has now returned to ACB in his new role. He has, as you might expect, hit the ground running, and you will be hearing from him directly over the next few months. In the meantime, please join us in welcoming Eric back to the ACB staff.