SWANA Staff Grows

Several staff changes have taken place recently at SWANA Association Offices in Silver Spring, MD. Executive Director and CEO John H. Skinner, Ph. D., sees the moves as a way for SWANA to provide more services to members, as well as the solid waste community as a whole. Skinner commented, "These changes position SWANA to enhance our current offerings and better expand in new areas such as electronic training."

Among the internal changes: Adam Tracey moves from Customer Relations & Projects Coordinator to Membership Manager; Steve Ridzon, from Technical Program Coordinator to Program Manager, and Brent Dieleman, from Technical Program Coordinator to Program Manager.

In his new role, Tracey will be in charge of overseeing all of the association's membership activity. This includes: new member acquisition and retention, member services, chapter relations, and database integrity.

In their new roles, Dieleman and Ridzon will each oversee all activities of several of SWANA's technical divisions, including planning their respective divisions' annual conferences and managing their steering committees. Dieleman will be responsible for the Planning & Management and Waste-to-Energy Divisions, while Ridzon will oversee the Communication, Education, & Marketing and Landfill Management Divisions.

In addition to the appointments, two new staff members have joined the Association in its Silver Spring offices: Kimberly Baca has been named SWANA's Meetings Coordinator, and Robert A. Wolfe, Jr. has joined in the newly-created position of E-training and Certification Coordinator.

In her new position, Baca, a Recreation, Parks and Tourism graduate from the University of Florida, will coordinate attendee registrations for all of SWANA's events and will assist in the planning of conferences and training events.

A University of Maryland-Baltimore County graduate, Wolfe will give support to chapters holding SWANA training courses and will also assist in enhancing SWANA's current electronic training programs while developing new opportunities.

"I'm very proud of the accomplishments of all those who have been appointed to new positions, and look forward to working with them, as well as with Kim and Robert, to help grow our association," commented Skinner.