By Beth Bales and Bryan Kay
The SVS Appointments Committee has made great efforts to be more transparent, diverse and equitable in recent years—a process its chair and members plan to continue.
Improvements undertaken in the last four years include requiring more specific interest statements from candidate volunteers, leveraging chair and staff evaluations to judge performance and the fit of existing appointments, and enhanced attention to SVS diversity and inclusion metrics in the appointments process, committee member and SVS president Ronald L. Dalman recently noted.
Traditionally, the committee consists of three members including the president, president-elect (Ali AbuRahma, MD) and vice president (Michael C. Dalsing, MD), with the president-elect as chair.
However, the Executive Board has expanded the committee’s composition to reflect diversity, equality and inclusion. So three members were added to the present composition: one from the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, one from the Community Practice Committee, and one representing the younger generation of the SVS membership. Among its appointments process activities, the committee works to ensure no single member is burdened with too many assignments. “Our goal is to make the process as transparent, inclusive and equitable as possible,” Dalman said. “Great progress has been made towards these goals, but there still is much more to do.”