I’m glad the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) will be recognizing Dave with the Key Award at their annual meeting in Los Angeles this August for his accomplishments as the leader of AGA and indeed his career. Too often, people do great work and never really get the recognition they deserve.
I’ve been at AGA for almost two years now and have nothing but good things to say about Dave. The thing about AGA is there are a lot of people that have been here a very long time. Always a good sign when you’re thinking about where you want to spend your day during a job search. When you talk to those people they talk about the way Dave handled the transition of AGA from a much larger organization based in Virginia to a much leaner organization based in DC.
One of the first stories they’ll tell you is how Dave configured the AGA space to be entirely open to improve communication. There are only five people with offices at AGA (they need them for HR/legal reasons). Dave isn’t one of them. He sits at a desk two spaces over. If I stand up right now, I can see his desk. It’s been great to be able to sit so close and hear some of the conversations he has. Very valuable. It’s not so great if I want to take a slightly longer lunch. Of course, since Dave tells me he reads every blog post, he knows I’m only joking and I never take a long lunch. Right, Dave?
Dave announced his retirement plans back in February. We’ll certainly miss him when he finally leaves but he’s made sure to put plans in place so AGA keeps moving ahead with purpose. I’ve pulled some quotes from that article so he can tell you about his time at AGA in his own words.
“It has been a wonderful 13 years. I am extremely proud of all that the AGA team has accomplished. When I became president in 1997 I pledged that we would raise our voice, increase our visibility and provide outstanding value to the membership, and I believe we have succeeded in all three of those goals. On Capitol Hill and at the agencies that regulate our industry, AGA is considered an honest broker, a reliable partner and a knowledgeable source of information on all issues of importance to the natural gas utility. The dedication and commitment of the entire AGA leadership to this association has been the real key to our success. I have enjoyed working with every one of our members.”
On AGA staff. “I have never worked with a finer group of professionals. Over the years, as we streamlined operations and reduced staff, AGA team members took on more responsibility, yet the quality of the work only increased. Thanks to them, AGA will always be one of America’s most influential and effective trade associations.”
Congrats Dave. We’ve still got him for at least until the end of the year so I’m sure we’ll have some more posts like this one. Feel free to leave Dave a message below. You can certainly send him an email but if you leave the comment here, everyone can see it.
