The PDGA is pleased to announce the following four PDGA members as candidates for the 2015 PDGA Board of Directors elections. The PDGA elections will take place during the month of July and will once again be administered electronically by Intelliscan. Three at-large board member positions will be elected this year and the three candidates receiving the most votes will serve three year terms from September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2018.

Jeremy Johns, #27358 - Indiana, USA

Location: West Lafayette, IN
Born: 1980
Gender: Male
Introduction Video: http://youtu.be/U9b66uyF3iE
Education:

• Purdue University: BS & MS Organizational Leadership
• PhD in progress, focus on Quality Control and Process Improvement

Occupation: Student / Seeking Employment in Higher Education

Justin Menickelli, #31347 - North Carolina, USA

Location: Cullowhee, NC
Born: 1968
Gender: Male
Introduction Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDFEqJslCNo
Education:

• Ph.D. in Kinesiology, Louisiana State University, 2003
• MA.Ed. in Physical Education, Western Carolina University, 1995
• B.S. in Exercise Science, S.U.N.Y. Cortland, 1991

Occupation: College Professor

Hans Nagtegaal, #44969 - Utrecht, Netherlands

Location: Utrecht, Netherlands
Born: 1975
Gender: Male
Education:

• Psychology,–Universiteit Utrecht – Utrecht, The Netherlands (1996 – 1998)
• Computer Science – Universiteit Twente – Enschede, The Netherlands (1995 – 1996)
• Atheneum – Revius Lyceum – Doorn, The Netherlands (1987 – 1995)
• Equivalent of High school plus College in USA

Occupation: Successfully self-employed since 2000, as a tour manager, stage manager, and guitar technician for international touring artists and bands. Performing all managerial and accounting duties for my own company. 

Dave West, #752 - Missouri, USA

Location: St. Peters, MO
Born: 1957
Gender:  Male
Introduction Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kekHgb9Gdw4
Education: MBA, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE), 1984; BS, Management Information Systems (MIS) and Accounting, SIUE, 1980
Occupation: Retired, August 2013; formerly Director of Enterprise Development (Computer Programming); 150 person team.  Currently, I am a PDGA Board member.

Click here for a Full Biography and Platform Statement for each candidate.

Required Credentials

The PDGA Board of Directors formed a Nominating Committee in 2012 with the overall goal being to enhance the quality of the election pool, ultimately improving the effectiveness of the elected Board. The principal motivation for this effort is the realization that the responsibilities of PDGA board members have become significantly more demanding as the organization and the sport has grown larger and more complex.

The charge to the committee was two-fold, both to provide outreach to promising new candidates for the Board and to identify the business skills, training and other abilities that contributed to productive service on the board.

It can be a daunting task to fairly evaluate a candidates potential for effective service on the board. In order to assist the voters and make the assessments as fair as possible, the PDGA Nominating Committee created a set of metrics that could be applied equally to each candidate. Realizing that this would be an inexact science, the goal was to identify some of the key attributes that we felt were deemed important for a PDGA board member to possess. The factors that were selected are listed below.

Training and/or Experience in:

• Competitive Disc Golf
• Disc Golf Organization
• Finance
• Sales and Marketing
• Tech Management and Development
• Human Resources Management
• Journalism
• Event Production

Skilled in:

• Oral Communication
• Written Communication
• Promotion
• Listening to Others

Intangibles:

• Enthusiasm for the Task
• Time Availability
• Collaborative
• Creative Innovator
• Vision
• Flexible/Adaptable
• Respected

We suggest that you carefully read the candidate bios and statements and make your own assessment of how each candidate matches up with these attributes.

The committee also suggests a second evaluation to provide a more practical assessment of each candidate’s potential for useful service on the board. To do that, we suggest that you imagine that you have your choice of all of the candidates for a number of typical PDGA board task assignments. See how each of the candidates matches up with these tasks. If you find yourself consistently picking out a candidate for numerous assignments, that’s a significant indicator. If, on the other hand, you can’t find a fit for a candidate, then that may be a sign that there would be the same situation on the board. The goal is to achieve a more typical and real-world assessment of each candidate’s abilities. The suggested tasks to consider are listed below.

• Moderating a member forum at Worlds
• Overseeing a redesign of pdga.com
• Selecting an editor for Disc Golfer magazine
• Liaison to the Rules Committee
• Overseeing PDGA actions in a lawsuit
• Coordinating the revamp of the PDGA logo
• Liaison with a youth development program
• Reviewing the PDGA's annual auditor's report
• Liaison to the Tech Standards Committee
• Providing IDGC staffing oversight
• Selection of a PDGA Executive Director
• Liaison to the Course Design Group
• Redesigning the national tour

The Bottom Line

As in any election, there are many important factors on which you simply won’t have enough information. In the case of candidates that you may know personally, they may gain advantage or be held unfairly accountable for things that you know about their past actions. Candidates who you don’t know are impossible to assess on some of the key factors and also may gain advantage by presenting biographical information that is not reflective of their true abilities. Candidates who have long, successful experience in PDGA work have a clear advantage in our evaluation process. If you have a job that needs to be done, it’s natural to pick the proven veteran over the unknown. However, we also know that it’s essential to have fresh perspectives and proven business experience on a successful board. It’s hard to give that untapped potential its fair weight in this process. In short, it’s very difficult to predict how effective any particular candidate may actually be as a board member.

For now, we hope that you’ll find that these assessment tools help you focus on the kind of board member that you want to move the PDGA forward to the future that you imagine.

Please Vote!

When you receive your email ballot in early July, please take a few minutes of your time to complete and submit it. In doing so not only are you fulfilling one of your basic rights and responsibilities as a PDGA member, but you are also demonstrating that the work performed by these core volunteers is important and worthwhile, both for you personally, and for the PDGA and disc golf as a whole.

For more information, visit the PDGA elections page.