A belated Happy New Year from your President!
For those of you who have not yet heard … our Executive Director, Anita Price, has announced her retirement date. She will be officially stepping down on Tuesday, September 28, 2021. I don’t think anyone really believed she would retire!
Knowing that Anita was going to retire compelled me to come out of retirement (Ross Farm Museum). I believe strongly in the work that ANSM does and thought I might be helpful on the Board with hiring a new Executive Director. I will be on as President for the year before and the year after her retirement, with an option to re-offer at the end of the two-year term. This timing should assist with maintaining continuity of our institutional memory.
This is just a little memo to bring you up to date on the Board’s progress. I will provide updates periodically. Please feel free to contact either Anita or myself with any questions you may have. My email is lisawolfe@eastlink.ca.
From September’s AGM until the Christmas break the Board set a timeline for the hiring process and reviewed the Strategic Plan from the point of view of the effect of Covid-19 on its implementation. With the beginning of the new year, we have reviewed the job description and compiled a Skills Matrix to review resumes. A Hiring Committee was formed (see below). We will need to consider all the legal and financial considerations for a new hire. All relevant material will go to the Hiring Committee about mid-March 2021. Our plan is to advertise the position the beginning of April. The job offer will go out in the summer and the new Executive Director will start mid-September to be introduced to the membership at the AGM.
The final decision for the hire is with the Board of Directors. The recommendations will come from the Hiring Committee. The Hiring Committee is:
- Lisa Wolfe: Committee Chair, President ANSM, Retired Director Ross Farm Museum
- Stephanie Smith: Executive Director of Archives, Museums and Libraries, Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage
- Angela Saunders: VP ANSM, General Manager, Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic (Southwestern)
- Mark Peapell: past Board Member ANSM, President, Peapell & Associates / Supertemp (Central)
- Rodney Chaisson: Director, Highland Village Museum, Past Pres ANSM, Chair Hiring Committee 2009(Cape Breton)
- Oralee O’Byrne: current Past Pres ANSM, Age of Sail Museum, (Northeastern)
You have a Board that is committed to providing leadership through the transition and to uphold fair hiring practices throughout the competition for a new Executive Director.
As Anita always says … Onwards!
