President of EATA 1996 until 1999

I became President of EATA immediately after the separation from the ITAA. Much of my time as president was devoted to rebuilding healthy relationships between the two associations and together with Gloria Noriega, the President of ITAA, I am proud that we were able to continue in a collegiate way.

This reconstruction involved dealing with the feelings of hurt and mistrust between people on the two boards and also working with the Training and Standards Committees.

image037Gordon Hewitt and I put a lot of energy into looking at how we could achieve parity and remove training and standards from the political arena. We achieved this by structural changes so that the two international training standards bodies were independent of political control. Thus together we achieved new structures and understandings that al- lowed TA to retain an internationally united approach to training and certification, with mutual recognition between the two organisations.

I made it my objective as President to achieve financial stability for EATA, with a good reserve in the bank. Our treasurers were all terrific during this period and with their sound budgeting and by managing our conferences to achieve positive financial outcomes we ended my term with one year’s income in reserve.

Finally we established a small executive committee who could manage the general running of the organisation and used the larger body to devote time to look at a range of other issues. This had the effect of making meetings more manageable and streamlined the decision making processes.