More to come from this week's C&EN, but the big news is that ACS executive director Madeleine Jacobs is retiring. From the article by Maureen Rouhi:
American Chemical Society Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Madeleine Jacobs will retire at the end of 2014 after 24½ years of service, including 8½ years as C&EN’s editor-in-chief.
“The past 10 years have been very good for ACS through difficult times,” says ACS Board Chair William F. Carroll Jr. “Madeleine has been a great change manager, leader for staff, and face for the society, particularly in Washington, D.C. We’ll miss her. And I defy anyone to find someone more broadly knowledgeable and energetic. ACS, the board, and I personally, will miss her at the top but will benefit from her future engagement as a member.”
As CEO, Jacobs led ACS staff to an impressive portfolio of substantive achievements. They include consistently returning a positive net contribution to the society for 10 consecutive years; expanding membership, education, and public affairs offerings; growing the ACS journals program; and posting record-breaking growth in the databases underpinning Chemical Abstracts Service’s SciFinder....Gotta love Bill Carroll's "a great change manager" -- that's an impressive bit of code that I find somewhat impenetrable.
I wonder who will be the next $800,000 CEO of the American Chemical Society?
Can I apply? Where do I sign?
ReplyDeleteI nominate Roger Goddell. He runs the most profitable 'non-profit' in history!
ReplyDeleteChange manager.... Likely that she laid off some people, and then had a corny & expensive get together for the survivors to boost moral.
ReplyDeleteI had all As in my MBA, except for one course. I got a B+ in change management because I could not pretend to believe that bullshit.
i wonder what portion of $800K she'll get as a pension. how else will she make ends meet?
ReplyDeleteby the way, as for "I defy anyone to find someone more broadly knowledgeable and energetic"; remember that Madeleine Jacobs, unlike the membership of ACS, does not hold a PhD in any subject.
DeleteI don't have a ton of love for the ACS, but complaining that she doesn't have a PhD is silly. She's an administrator, not a scientist. Most CEOs of pharma and major chemical companies aren't PhD scientists, just like most GMs of major league baseball teams aren't former players. Lilly is run by a PhD chemist, how are they doing?
DeleteI'd also bet that the ACS has more non-PhD members than PhDs.
Oh come on. I'm not one to criticize anyone's education (we all know PhDs who are among the stupidest people we've ever met). But first off, it's a direct response to "broadly knowledgeable" which often includes someone's overall education. Secondly both she and Rudy Baum pulled in six-figure salaries for a decade leading people with these degrees--when they had little or no direct understanding of their situations. They sounded more out of touch than GHW Bush in the '92 elections! Who takes advice about grad school from people who've never been there?
DeleteBut this brings up a question. Why do academic departments and whole universities use professors to do administrative functions, when you can have them staffed with MBA's to cut professors's service time? They did that at the R1's for the teaching obligations. Just get a couple of "lecturers" and voila!
As to CJ's question of who's going to be the next $800K CEO of ACS, my guess is "No one." I would bet CJ a steak dinner or a new duck that the next salary will be considerably lower.
ReplyDeleteDefine the terms of "considerably" and you're on.
DeleteTake the bet, CJ. I'd bet it's the same or more...
DeleteOn Twitter, Harry has defined "considerably lower" as less than $640,000. I'll take that bet.
DeleteThe ACS should really give this position to one of the many long term unemployed chemists out there.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that an administrator need not understand the discipline in order to manage. But as an ACS employee and chemist - Jacobs is a poor representation of chemists, any chemist. I have had to sit and listen to her too many times. It's hard for me to be diplomatic when she pulls $800k a year, doesn't understand chemists (or very much chemistry) and dropped out of grad school. The ACS isn't a corporation, it is an organization dedicated to the discipline of chemistry and all that it entails. Leadership? Good riddance.
ReplyDeleteMs. Jacobs had a politically-protected billet, serving well as ACS's Apparatchik. The ACS seems more an extension of the Democratic National Committee with politics supplanting science.
ReplyDelete