When Teresa Schmedding and David Sullivan announced their decisions not to run again as president and vice president of ACES: The Society for Editing, I panicked.
This organization owes so much of its success and stability to their leadership. Could we keep up the initiatives they had set in motion? Where would the next big ideas come from? And who would possibly fill their shoes?
After that moment of panic, I looked around at the people who make up ACES: the volunteers who work so tirelessly, the members who keep coming back to our conferences, the editing veterans who jump to contribute to Twitter chats and session panels. I remembered that there’s no one person responsible — we’re all in this together to promote the work of editors and to lift each other up.
Even in my short time on the board, ACES has grown by leaps and bounds. In 2015, when I became treasurer, we had 1,300 members; today, we’re at more than 2,500. It’s so exciting — but it brings new challenges.
We need to be sure to balance the needs of the members who have been here since the beginning with the needs of a new generation of editors — those who may have approached the field in completely different ways. I want to maintain that sense of community that brought so many of us to ACES in the first place, which won’t be easy in an organization growing as much as we have. But there’s room for all of us in this group — and we all have things to learn from one another.
I know I have so much to learn from so many of you, and I’d love to hear from you if you have thoughts or concerns. ACES is in an exciting place, and I’m humbled and honored to be your president.
Header photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash
