Friday, December 21, 2018

LONNIE

Within a day of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago announcement that the Federation Board had voted to accept the recommendation of its Search Committee and elected Lonnie Nasatir to succeed Steve Nasatir as CEO, several of you wrote to the Blog or offline. One of you asked:

"Richard:

On a different topic, but since you have not posted a word since Steve Nasatir some time ago announced his imminent retirement:

Lonnie?

Time for you to post. Defend the choice all you want, but at minimum the optics look awful. Perhaps that's why they announced it right before the holiday break?" 
In fact I had earlier responded to a Comment on these pages.
Thanks for your question. I was honored to serve on the Search Committee which unanimously recommended that Lonnie Nasatir succeed Steve Nasatir as the Chicago Federation CEO. Lester Crown spoke for all of us when he told JTA:

“We interviewed dozens of exceptional candidates, and were thrilled with the caliber of leadership represented,” said Lester Crown, a leading local philanthropist and member of the search committee.
I think that all of us were aware (how could we not be) that there would be those who would suggest that the "optics" are bad or good depending on one's view. We who served on the Search Committee were determined to pick the best person for this awesome task.

We believed, unanimously, that we did so.

Rwexler 

P.S. The announcement was timed to the long-scheduled Federation Board meeting at which Lonnie's election took place. 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As the cop on the beat would say, "Nothing to see here, move on". Handled in true Chicago style.

Anonymous said...

Maybe you could share the process you participated in? All those dozens of candidates; the interviewing must have seemed endless. Then the hours of interviews with each of the finalists (assuming there was more than one). The opportunity for others outside of the search committee (how many sat on the search committee?) to interact with the finalists. Did the board vote? Maybe you can share the vote.

RWEX said...

Uhhhh....no. Your sarcasm is appreciated, though.

RWEX said...

To Anon @ 4:21 above: You've now written again...angrier. I hope this will not anger you further but I am deleting your most recent set of accusations. Thanks for being a reader.