Letter from Joe Foley, New SSA Board Chair

Dear Activists,

My name is Joe Foley and I'm honored to announce that I'm the new chair of the Secular Student Alliance's Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is democratically elected by the SSA's members and is the main governing body of the organization.

Every member of this board has experience with on-campus or regional activism, and I'm no exception. I served as co-chair of Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists (CASH) at the University of Minnesota, where I completed a bachelor's degree in biology and minored in music, and I'm now a doctoral candidate in genetics at Stanford University, where I co-founded another SSA affiliate, Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA!) at Stanford. Before joining the SSA board four years ago, I was the treasurer of the Secular Coalition for America.

I'm confident that I can help lead the Secular Student Alliance to even greater effectiveness and visibility, but I have a tough act to follow. Hemant Mehta served as Chair of the Board of Directors for an impressive five years, half the SSA's lifetime. He maintained a collegial but productive atmosphere among the board and the ever-growing staff, and he was instrumental in recruiting so many talented and enthusiastic leaders as board candidates. Hemant has contributed more than any other volunteer to the amazing growth the SSA has seen over the last few years, and every one of us on the board is proud to call him a colleague and friend.

I should point out that Hemant isn't leaving the Secular Student Alliance or the freethought movement. He'll continue to serve on the Board of Directors as a member at large and take on speaking enegagements through the SSA Speakers Bureau. Of course, he'll also keep blogging at Friendly Atheist.

The Secular Student Alliance has built up a lot of momentum recently, and as the chair I'll do everything I can to keep pushing it forward, or at least to keep up with it. New student groups have been springing up much faster than we're able to expand the services we provide for them, but we're making a lot of headway. We now have over 200 active affiliates (four times as many as in 2006), our conferences and brand-new Regional Leadership Summits reached 160 student activists from 61 schools this year, and we gained enough visibility to get invited to two meetings at the White House. I'm especially excited that we're making progress behind the scenes on a new set of services for alumni-stay tuned for more information.

The future of the Secular Student Alliance looks brighter than ever. I'm grateful for the privilege of helping steer the SSA forward, and I can't wait for the amazing new progress we'll make this year. Thanks for reading, and thanks for everything you do to support the secular student movement.

With great hopes,
Joe