What happened in 2024?
What didn’t happen? It was an amazing year!
We had a great, and I mean great, Annual Conference in July hosted by EducationNC in beautiful Asheville. Thanks to Mebane Rash and her team for putting it on. Learn all about the conference here.
At the conference,I was replaced by Jeff Hornstein in the position of president. Ryan Hankins replaced Jeff as vice president.
In addition, 2024 saw Kris Sjoblom retire after a long time in public policy research and a long time as the GRA’s treasurer. We welcomed Phyllis Resnick as our new treasurer.
Annie McGowan stepped away from her position as secretary. We welcome Stephen Stuart in her place.
We had productive and insightful Trustees meetings every month throughout the year.
And 2024 was the year of GRA Councils. We started having quarterly virtual meetings.
The Executive Directors Council met in Birmingham, Alabama starting at the end of January. Thanks Ryan! Those were productive meetings, leading to a retreat. The GRA had an Executive Directors Council retreat near Asheville before the conference. At the retreat, the team drafted the GRA’s first compendium of research.
Executive directors met several other times.
The GRA Researchers Council had several meetings in 2024:
- January – a kick-off meeting.
- March – a skill share on interactive data sets.
- May – a policy-sharing session.
- September – an R Studio Tutorial.
- November – a presentation from members of the Census Bureau on the Census of Governments.
The GRA Operations Council also met starting in April:
- April – to discuss what members can get out of this council.
- June – a knowledge share on software products.
- September – to discuss the Best Practices Guide.
- November – to discuss the Best Practices Guide.
Great job during 2024 to our Trustees! And a special thanks to Justine Oliva, Eric Kneeland, and Eric Lupher for heading up the councils. And thanks to Ashley Marshall-Cantor for putting together the GRA Reporters and keeping us all up to date. And thank you to Bob Schneider for heading up the Membership Committee. And sorry to anyone I missed…
More events. More insight. More GRA for a great 2024.
What is in store for 2025?
The GRA is off to a great start.
In January, the councils kicked off the new year with great discussions. The Executive Directors Council had a productive and insightful meeting. The Researchers Council hosted an AI tutorial with Saloni Tandon and the Operations Council had “Podcasting 101” from Grace Graves Baron & Maureen McNulty Saxton.
Stay tuned for a joint council meeting in March to discuss how we communicate our research findings.
Finally, I’m very excited to visit Providence in July for the Annual Conference. (Mark your calendars for July 13 through 16.) The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council will be hosting a stellar event.
See you in Rhode Island and at the council meetings. Here’s to a great 2025 for the GRA!
— Written by Shawn Teigen, former GRA presdient.