[avatar user=”Chris Shillum” size=”thumbnail” align=”left” /]
On behalf of the ORCID Board and staff, thank you to everyone who submitted nominations and participated in this year’s Board elections process, especially the members of our Nominating Committee. Please join us in welcoming our new and returning Board members:
- Clare Appavoo, Executive Director, Canadian Research Knowledge Network
- Paul Gemmill, Program Director, UK Research and Innovation
- Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor & Coordinator for LISI, U Illinois Library
- Calvin Johnson, Chief, High Performing Computing and Informatics, NIH
- Alison Mitchell, Chief Journals Officer, Springer Nature (Returning for a second term)
- Daisy Selamatsela, Executive Director of the Department of Library and Information Services, UNISA (Returning for a second term)
ORCID holds Board member elections every year, following an open recommendation and nominations process. ORCID Board members serve for three years; each year about a third of the Board seats are up for election. The Nominating Committee was chaired with great dedication this year by outgoing ORCID Board Member Karin Wulf. The committee reviewed 13 applications.
The committee sought to balance a number of objectives when developing the slate. Their overarching aim was to recommend candidates who are driven by the ORCID mission and are able to contribute to ORCID’s development through their personal and organizational knowledge and networks of influence. Diversity was also an important factor—in terms of skills, background, geographic location and organizational representation—and the committee also ensured that the Board, as per our bylaws, retained a majority of representatives of non-profit members.
The Nominating Committee’s slate of candidates was reviewed by the Board at its September 2020 meeting, announced in this blog post by Karin Wulf, and sent directly to ORCID members via our newsletter and an email to all voting contacts in member organizations.
Of the 996 members eligible to vote in the 2021 Board elections, 338 (34%) cast votes, above the 10% participation threshold needed for the election to be valid. Of those members casting ballots, 330 (97.6%) voted in favor of the slate, 7 (2.1%) abstained, and 1 (.3%) voted against the ballot. The election results were certified at 13:05 GMT on 30 November 2020.
Please accept my thanks if you participated in the election, and join me in congratulating our new Board members on their election.
As we welcome our new board members, I would also like to take a moment to recognize the contributions of our departing board members. This year, six members are leaving the board, including three of our founding board members: Richard Ikeda, Salvatore Mele (founding member), Ed Pentz (founding member), Andrew Preston, Simeon Warner (founding member), and Karin Wulf. Among the six departing members, they represent 39 years of service on the ORCID board, including 25 years of service on board committees. The founding members signed ORCID’s certificate of incorporation and provided guidance as ORCID has grown from 43,000 registered iDs to 10 million.