Announcement from Ken Libertoff
Over the next few days, I will publicly announce that at the end of 2010, I will be stepping down as Director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health. By That time, I will have put in thirty years of work and play – along with some blood, sweat and tears. I have been thrilled with many victories and have suffered over shortcomings and occasional defeats.
Besides “traveling’ tot eh Vermont Statehouse for three decades, I have visited and consulted with more than three dozen states, delivered an address at the Sorbonne in Paris and of course, had two incredible work assignments in South Africa. For the record, I started in 1981 with an ink mimeo-printing machine and managed to give my one and only power point presentation in Swaziland at the African Mental Health Congress several years ago.
Happily I can reflect back on important moments – the passage of Vermont’s Parity bill in ’97, the Pharmaceutical Disclosure bill of last year, the ‘un-shackling of Vermont kids’, the unraveling of the Fletcher Allen Healthcare scandal, passing regulatory legislation to better ‘manage’ managed care companies, resisting Crazy for You Bears in the Vermont Teddy Bear campaign, building up Camp Daybreak, creating Friends of Recovery of Vermont and supporting the concept of community based services – to name a few.
I know that the Board of Directors of the VAMH will commence a comprehensive and thoughtful search for a new director over the course of this year. Indeed a plan is in place.
Like an aging athlete, it is my desire to end this phase of my career while I am still at (or at least near) the top of my game, sinking three pointers (basketball) and chasing down backhands with reckless abandon (tennis).
In the end, it is not the legislative achievements, the battles over funding or the seemingly endless (and sometimes boring) meetings that will remember.
It is working with people like you!
Ken Libertoff
