Transcript/Summary:

Hello, Happy Independence Day / July 4th! I will give two recaps of what went on today at the NAD Conference in Chicago.

The first is the election for new officers, including the new NAD president. The most watched race was between the current president Jenny Buechner and her challenger, Lisa Rose, who is a board member.

Right before delegates were set to vote at the Council of Representatives this morning here behind me, a person came up and made a proposal to go into executive session for all delegates. This means the public and media members (including me) — anyone who is not a delegate — would have to leave the room. This proposal actually passed. So everyone in the audience had to leave, including myself. The doors were closed.

The reason why? They wanted to talk about issues of transparency related to the former CEO and others.

(Video clip showing a delegate making a proposal: “The officers, the Board member, and the former President, and the former CEOs, and current interim CEO. That’s who would be meeting in executive session. Everyone else would have…)

(Motion: COR goes into the Executive Session to discuss transparency. This session will include delegates and current officers and board and past presidents and former CEOs and Interim CEO.)

They weren’t very specific about what the issues they wanted to talk about. It was vague. But it looks like they wanted to talk about the former CEO Howard Rosenblum, Super Bowl issues, and other things involving the NAD. They may have wanted to talk it out before moving forward to voting for new officers. That’s just my assumption. I had to leave the room for a good 30-40 minutes. When the room opened up again, they did not explain what they discussed. It was all a secret. I asked some delegates on how they feel about it but all were tight-lipped (handed). They said they can’t talk about the executive session. So basically, only delegates know what happened in that session.

After this, they proceeded to vote for the new president.

(Video clip showing two candidates: 1. Jenny Buechner and 2. Lisa Rose)

Lisa Rose won. (Rose got 66 votes while Buechner got 34 votes).

Rose will now replace Jenny Buechner. She’s done after one term. Rose will take an oath tomorrow. There were also elections for new board members and new officers. Some of the positions were competitive but some were the only candidate and easily won.

(Images showing Vice President: Stephanie Hakulin (unopposed), Secretary Milmaglyn Morales (unopposed), Treasurer James “Dino” Christianson Jr. (unopposed).

They will swear in tomorrow. So a big announcement is that Lisa Rose is the new NAD President for this term.

I also went to a workshop conducted by LEAD-K. It was a high-energy and exciting workshop. They explained that LEAD-K legislation passed in 22 states.

(Video clip showing the workshop and the list of states passed)

There were LEAD-K representatives who came up who explained how they worked with state lawmakers to push for LEAD-K passage. They also showed data of deaf and hard of hearing children’s language acquisition.

(Video clip showing the workshop and some data)

One big announcement is that the LEAD-K will hold a summit in November where they will work towards getting legislation passed on the federal level. That means Congress. LEAD-K has been a state by state effort but they want it to apply to all of America.

That’s the two briefs. I will continue to cover more events here at the NAD Conference.

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