Executive Director, ELGL
kirsten@elgl.org | @kowyatt
As many of you know, I left my job in West Linn for a variety of reasons, the most important being that I realized that West Linn was no longer providing me a platform to pursue a local government career I believed in. My personal career goal has always been simple: to do work where I can make the biggest difference in the world.
I strongly believe that local government is a fair, transparent and communicative place, and I have deep respect for the dedicated employees who work in government. I think that ELGL is doing more to support local government employees than any other organization. We act on our mission to connect, communicate, and educate every single day.
And so, I’ve decided to focus this next stage of my career on ELGL as its executive director. I want to support our members, build the organization’s brand, and solidify the organization’s platform and programs. I’ll do this by focusing my full attention on membership expansion, working with our members to develop practical programs and blog series that benefit local government, and organizing creative and useful events like #ELGL16 (and more).
As with all things that ELGL does, we’ll share everything we produce with our members, guaranteeing that ELGL is your go-to resource for local government tools, perspectives and training.
ELGL’s explosive growth in the past two years makes this the perfect time to step into this role. I’m really excited to work directly for our ELGL members, and to promote public service professions.
As your executive director, I’ll write a Sunday column to provide you with an overview of what we’ve accomplished in the prior week. If you have any questions, please email me or tweet at me.
ELGL Weekly Update – 05.22.16
Connect:
- This week, we added 23 new members and one new organizational member.
- In addition to the jobs included in Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, we also highlighted five specific job postings for our organizational members (an extra benefit for our org members!):
- We also relaunched Supper Clubs, and continue to see our members’ delight when they receive a birthday book from Birthdays and Books.
- Big ups to ELGL members and new, exciting jobs: Bonnie Svrcek (city manager, Lynchburg, VA), Matt Bronson (city manager, Grover Beach, CA) and Sam Taylor (deputy city administrator, Coeur d’Alene, ID)!
Communicate:
- ELGL.org had 6,700 page views (5,300 unique views) on 30 blog posts.
- The most popular post of the week? A three way tie: The May Confidential, Supper Clubs Return, and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.
- We learned about local government in Korea, developing a sustainability plan, Dorian Sanchez, Chad Gibson, and citizen engagement lessons from Bang the Table.
Educate:
- We hosted a webinar on Canva, and presented at the Governing Magazine Texas Leadership Forum.
- This week’s GovLove podcast featured two finance directors talking about the pros and cons of annual and biennial budgeting.
- We’ve also begun building out ELGL’s new events module, which will keep track of every special event and learning opportunity. Some of these events are hosted by ELGL (and you’ll register for them through ELGL.org) and other events are hosted by ELGL partner organizations.
- Coming up this week: 05/25/2016 from 10:00 am – 11:00 am: Bang the Table: Community Engagement With Matt Crozier. This is an ELGL Webinar; log on to anymeeting.com/elgl50.
Questions? Comments? Drop me a note and let me know how ELGL can best serve you!