I do not like putting HR updates out to the board via email, but I have been asked to. Please keep this as board confidential as it deals with staff. Since the January 2023 board meeting, we've been having issues with Steve Berry. He was very angry at me and the board for "forcing" him to hire a project manager for LoTW. He told me, in a status meeting with Diane shortly thereafter, that "we must have our heads up our ass" if we think he came to ARRL to manage a team or to work on Personify. He claimed that his sole purpose for being at ARRL was LoTW. I asked him for a plan to show how he envisioned doing the LoTW next gen project without a project manager. We never received one. He was asked to put together the new LoTW Committee with Mickey. I sent him and the group an email months ago suggesting some potential outside participants. Steve never followed up. I've been speaking to the board members who I rely on for IT advice (Mickey, Kristen, Fred, and Tony) about this situation with Steve since last Spring. The major issue we had with Steve, other than he refused to create any sort of plan for any of his projects, is that he refused to focus on a priority list developed with his peers. He never developed one, and while other priorities became critical, it was only then that he would pay attention to them. His solutions were Just-in-Time, and we always 80/20, where once he would take a new solution live, there were many bugs or oversights that required emergency action to rectify. A few weeks ago, as we went through all the priorities we were seeing no advancement on, most especially all the work required to handle the dues restructuring and the life member opt-in, it came to light that he had been spending significant effort building a "new ham" website. No one had that as a priority. There were no less than 10 items that required progress from IT, and yet this project consumed his time. Again, in a meeting that Diane was a participant in, he blew up and stormed out questioned about what the project was and why no one else, especially Marketing, was involved in its development. He yelled that he would not be micro-managed and wasn't coming back. I tried up through last week to establish a part time consulting relationship with him so that he could spend the next 4 to 6 weeks bringing these priorities to a conclusion. Steve demanded a one year, non-revokable agreement with no terms for termination, including non-performance. He also demanded more hours per month so that in essence he calculated what he needed to replace his salary while working part time for the full 12 months. And gave us an ultimatum that his "offer" expired close of business Friday. I declined. I am now working with the IT team to get these items completed, and we are also recruiting for a new Director of IT. One thing that we did learn, in earnest, from Steve is that a remote IT Director is a non-starter. The director needs to be here, working with the OTHER department heads on THEIR priorities, not on creative skunkworks projects that are fun to do but consume precious resources needed by the business. There's much more, but those are the important points. David