Thank You to Our Outgoing Board Members

Tim wraps up his six-year term on the TSAE Board of Directors: first his three-year term as a director on the board and finally his three-year term as an officer on the board filling the Chair-Elect, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair role. During his term as a director on the TSAE Board of Directors, Tim was instrumental working hand-in-hand with TSAE staff to overhaul TSAE membership dues tiers completely – taking TSAE from a complex and often confusing membership model with 14 different membership price point tiers down to a simplified five membership tiers. He also served as an officer of TSAE during the challenging COVID-19 year as well as the following recovery year. While TSAE is still recovering from those times financially, due to Tim’s steady leadership TSAE is still standing and continues to be a trusted resource for associations.

John Bacon, MBA
Vice President, Account Management
Naylor Association Solutions
Gainesville, FL

In working with associations around the country, including other state/local SAEs, John was able to assist TSAE in benchmarking our performance with other groups along with allied SAEs in looking at initiatives as well as data. He served on the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Strategic Initiative Group in 2020-2021, where the new TSAE DEl Committee as well as the DEI Benchmarking Tool were created. The following year he served as the lead on the Diversifying & Expanding Revenues Strategic Initiative Group, which assisted TSAE in evaluating all financial opportunities for the organization. John was an integral part of the Board of Directors who created the current Strategic Plan and dedicated time to the strategic initiative of Advancing DEI to Foster Community & Member Success with that plan.

Annette Hicks, CMP
Vice President of Meetings & Events
Texas Food & Fuel Association
Austin, TX

Throughout her three-year term, Annette truly focused on the member experience. She was part of conducting Next-Gen Focus Groups, then analyzing results to assist TSAE in creating a space and offerings conducive to building on our Next-Gen Community. Her work in the group helped foster the creation of Better by Association, a TSAE original podcast. Annette also served as a member of the Board Strategic Initiative Group that worked on operationalizing the TSAE Board’s strategic work in the day-to-day of the organization. Finally, she worked with a strategic initiative group within the Board of Directors to Understand Member Needs to Create Value & Growth, which produced such programs as our Member Referral Program and the TSAE Mentorship Program.

Melissa J. Schank, CAE
Chief Executive Officer
Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
Austin, TX

Melissa worked with our Next-Gen Strategic Initiative Group to help craft a survey of TSAE’s Next-Gen Members and analyze the feedback, as well as host Next-Gen Focus Groups to assist in learning how TSAE can better serve the next generation. She also worked with a board initiative group that helped define and measure member engagement within TSAE to assist staff in making data-driven decisions in creating an engaged member experience. Finally, as a member of the board of directors who assisted in creating our current Strategic Plan, she worked on the strategic initiative focused on Innovation Through Risk-Taking and worked with the TSAE staff to launch new products and stakeholder initiatives over the past year.

Nita R. Scott, CAE
Executive Director
The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International
Austin, TX

Nita, in her first year on the TSAE Board of Directors, also worked with the Next-Gen group analyzing and creating ways TSAE continues to engage a younger generation of executives, which paved the way for the launch of the TSAE podcast. In her second year, Nita volunteered to lead a strategic initiative group looking at defining what membership engagement is at TSAE as well as how to measure engagement. She assisted in the creation of engagement scoring for TSAE members, so staff have a better idea of individuals’ engagement level as a TSAE member. In her final year, after assisting in the creation of the current Strategic Plan, Nita led the Leveraging Data to Align Priorities with Capacity initiative group, who created measurement tools and a dashboard to make more informed decisions in moving forward with various initiatives in the future. As outlined in the TSAE Bylaws, in serving as a leader of strategic initiatives, Nita served two years on the TSAE Executive Committee.