President’s Letter

Fellow NABE members:

I am truly privileged to serve as NABE’s president as we enter our second half century and want to thank you for this honor.  I have never been as excited about my involvement with NABE or as upbeat about this organization’s future as I am today.  I perceive a renewed energy, a new sense of purpose, and an emerging revitalization built upon the last several years of hard work by recent presidents, board members, and a cadre of folks who have found value in and a real appreciation for what NABE has to offer. 

The current period of financial turmoil and the associated economic distress together present us with unique challenges and opportunities.  With your help, and with the help of a very talented and hard working board and NABE office, Lynn Reaser and I hope to build on the positive momentum we have established to face these challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. 

NABE Is Your Organization

I belonged to NABE for many years before I discovered one of its very important features.  While the NABE leadership serves a very important role, our structure allows for wide ranging member involvement and a significant role in driving the organization’s activities.   There are a number of avenues for doing so.

By participating in one or more of NABE’s several roundtables, or what the techies used to call SIGS (special interest groups), you can help initiate programming that meets your needs and interests.  Roundtable-sponsored teleconferences provide a valuable source of timely information and commentary.  Similarly the roundtables have organized sessions at the annual meetings and policy conferences and even sponsored more stand-alone focused conferences.

NABE’s board committees  provide opportunities for members to pitch in on many of NABE’s critical activities.  This year I have asked a number of non-board members to take positions on these committees and encouraged the committee chairs to invite other members to participate.  Please contact me or the committee chairs directly to join one of these committees.

Local chapters are often the point of initial contact with prospective members and carry on important programming and networking functions.  A vigorous set of chapters that serve well their local constituencies provides a natural pool from which we draw members and energy.   See the NABE website for a list of local chapters and contacts.

Get Connected is a new initiative, launched in March, aimed at providing a new mode of interacting with other NABE members and accessing NABE’s offerings.  Its mission is simply put: “Provide an entry point for new members to connect to NABE and encourage continuing participation and networking in order to sustain a lifetime attachment to NABE.”  In practice, it is a subcommittee of sorts comprised of many new members and a mix of more seasoned members who are developing networking events and career development and educational programs, while employing “newer” Web-based technologies (like LinkedIn) to facilitate these activities.  If you haven’t participated in a Get Connected activity you are missing an opportunity to meet the future of NABE! 

One such activity is NABE’s new Mentoring Program, about which I am very excited.  The goal of this program is to help promote the professional development of newer members and facilitate the building of professional relationships between newer members and veteran members.  The NABE Mentoring Pilot Program will pair senior NABE members with new or junior NABE members.  This program will go a long way toward building loyalty to NABE through tangible career enhancement and strengthen the ties that bind us as an organization of professionals with mutual interests.  I strongly encourage seasoned NABE members who wish to give back something to NABE and to younger professionals to consider serving as mentors.  All members of the national NABE may apply for the program.  Go here for more information.

It is a Time of Transition

Our outstanding executive director, Susan Doolittle, will be retiring after our annual meeting in 2009.  The search committee, which I chair, has selected an executive search firm and is in the process of defining the search parameters.  Beginning early next year we will conduct the search, with a goal of making our selection next summer.  Replacing a person like Susan, who has performed exceptionally in this position for 15 years, will be no easy task, but it is a very important one. We are fortunate that Susan will help facilitate a smooth transition.

The Membership Challenge

Despite the excellent value-proposition offered by membership in NABE, our numbers are on a gradual trend decline, one that may accelerate as a result of the current financial and economic turmoil.  To be sure the carnage on Wall Street and beyond will cost more than a few members their jobs.  I have requested and the board has approved that NABE provide free one-year membership renewals to current members who lose their jobs so that they may continue to access NABE products and, importantly, the job listings posted on our website. 

Frankly, we must soon reverse the membership decline if we are to remain the valuable organization we are today.  To do so we must continue to improve our product, make it relevant to the people who use economics in their work, and market it effectively.  While the board will work very hard to further these three goals, I cannot emphasize enough that promoting membership in NABE to our colleagues is a responsibility of every member who wants to see NABE continue as a vibrant, effective, and valuable organization.  Tell a friend!  Better yet, send them this link (http://www.nabe.com/join.htm) to a NABE membership application:

Meeting Our Longer-term Challenges

We must look further ahead with an eye to building NABE into a strong, sustainable professional organization that serves its members well in a number of areas.  A new long-range plan, developed with the involvement of both our incoming and outgoing executive directors will set a path for our organization.  As the first step on this agenda, we will conduct a membership survey this fall to engage the entire membership in our process of making NABE even more valuable for our members.

The NABE leadership believes that critical to strengthening NABE for the long term is aggressively pursuing our commitment to the career development of our members. I have re-established the Education Committee of the board of directors, now named the Career Development and Mentoring Committee, to re-focus our efforts in this area and provide support to our members in an area where they can realize real tangible value.

Raising NABE’s Profile

We want to continue to endeavor to raise NABE’s profile to a level commensurate with the excellent value we offer our members, and with the valuable service our members and NABE jointly offer the business community and policymakers. Through our surveys, meetings, publications, and other activities we serve not just our members, but also the broader community that uses economics in the normal course of business or in developing policies.  The current environment has our internal and/or external clients, as well as the media, turning to us to help them sort through both the macro and micro implications of the current turmoil.  This presents a unique opportunity to add value, to build credibility, and to prove the importance of the economic way of thinking in a host of situations.

Complementary to our effort to build a broader appreciation of what NABE stands for are our continuing efforts to shore up the foundation of good policymaking.  We have long been a proponent of adequate funding for economic statistics to insure that timely quality data are available to researchers, forecasters, and policymakers.  Working with the NABE Foundation and our Statistics Committee we will re-double efforts to promote an appreciation among policymakers of the importance of quality economic statistics. This helps keep NABE engaged with both the statistical agencies and policymakers.

As the foregoing should make clear, we have a very full agenda (and there is more that I left out).  In order to move the ball down the field in each of these areas, we will rely heavily on our committees, staffed by members of the board and many of you.  We would welcome your participation and your comments!

In closing, I want to say again that I am truly honored to serve as your president and I look forward to meeting more of you and hearing your good ideas (and of your willingness to help implement them), as we work together to strengthen an already great organization.

Sincerely,

Chris Varvares