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Bettie Harriman
New ABA Board Chair

Bettie Harriman, the current Vice-Chair of the ABA Board of Directors, has succeeded Richard Payne as Board Chair. Payne resigned as Board Chair after being appointed to the position of ABA President by the Board of Directors.

Bettie was elected to the ABA Board in 1999, where she has served with distinction and made valuable contributions to the Association. She was elected Vice-Chair in 2001. Bettie was instrumental in the rewrite of the ABA Bylaws, which were approved by the membership in 2003. She has valuable experience in board leadership, including terms as President of the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology and 9 years on the national Board of Directors of the American Association of University Women. While on the AAUW Board, she served as bylaws chair for 3 years, 2 years as Regional Vice-President, and 4 years as secretary of the Association.

Bettie was also the director of the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas project, and is one of the editors of the recently published (May, 2006) Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Wisconsin. She is currently co-editor, with her husband, Neil, of The Passenger Pigeon, the WSO journal. She is an active birder (680 ABA, 349 WI), who is looking forward to birding Attu in September.

The ABA Board is confident that Bettie's succession as Board Chair will result in a seamless leadership transition. Bettie will chair the Board until April, 2007, when her board service will end, and a new Board Chair will be selected.

Richard H. Payne is new President of ABA

The Board of Directors of the American Birding Association (ABA) is extremely pleased to announce that Richard H. (Dick) Payne has been appointed the new President and Chief Executive Officer of ABA. He will officially begin his duties on September 1, 2006. An extended and comprehensive search to fill this position brought the ABA Search Committee to the conclusion that we had the person with the necessary skills, experience, and abilities already sitting as the Chair of the Board of Directors. The persuasive skills of Search Committee Chair, Harry Tow, convinced Dick to change roles with ABA. (Harry was undoubtedly aided by the fact that Dick's wife, Kathy, is willing to share a new experience.)

With more than twenty-nine years of experience in academic administration, Dick brings to the position the abilities to develop a goal-based budget, manage personnel, do long-range planning, and secure broad and reliable funding support for ABA. He has been involved with environmental activities, primarily focused on birds and bird conservation, since the 1970s. He has also served, or is serving, on the boards of the Huntsville, Texas, Audubon Society, Watchable Wildlife, Inc., World Birding Center, and the Academic Advisory Board of Instituto Monteverde in Costa Rica. He has held or is holding memberships in Birds Australia, the Oklahoma and Texas Ornithological societies, Ecotourism Association of Australia, The International Ecotourism Society, and Wildlife Management Institute.

Dick also has managed to bird in all 50 states, all but one Canadian province, and on six continents. He became a member of the ABA Board of Directors in 1998, and was elected as Board Chair in 1999, where he served ABA until his resignation from that post to accept the office of President. It is safe to say that he understands the birding community.

Not least among the skills Dick brings to the position of CEO are his patience, fair play, and sense of humor. Those of us who have served with Dick on the Board of Directors have found him to be thoughtful, perceptive, hard-working, down-to-earth, and fun. We expect no less now that he is the President.

Bettie Harriman, Chair
ABA Board of Directors