IJA BOARD NOMINATIONS AND ELECTION RULES

Nominations are open for four seats on the IJA Board of Directors that are up for election in the summer of 2012. The size of the Board will remain at seven directors for the 2012 - 2013 year. Please see the Duties and Expectations of Board Members below.

Nominations may be made by any IJA member in good standing for at least one year. The election will occur during the annual summer festival.  IJA members may cast votes by mail or in person at the festival.

Nominations as well as the candidacy statements of nominees must be submitted by email to by the deadlines indicated below. No other form of submission is accepted.

For information on voting and finding the ballot in our magazine or online, see The Election: Voting below.

Deadlines at 11:59pm Pacific Time	Submissions are accepted only by email to:
May 15, 2012	Nomination submission deadline for candidate's name to appear on the ballot.
May 15, 2012	Candidacy statement submission deadline for statement to appear in a mailer with the ballot, in the IJA eNewsletter (May issue), on this web page and in the eZine. The candidacy statement is limited to 300 words and cannot be changed except within the first 48 hours after it is originally submitted.

See the full IJA Pre-Election and Election Regulations

Board Candidates

The names of board candidates nominated are shown below, in the order nominated. Click on a name to go to their candidacy statement page. You may vote for up to four candidates.

• Cameron McEwen
• Nathan Wakefield
• Scott Krause
• Lloyd Timberlake
• Erin Stephens

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Board Candidates' Statements

• Cameron McEwen

  I’m Cameron McEwen. This coming year will be my 5th IJA festival in a long planned career of attendance. Currently, I am working on getting my degrees both in sales and marketing. I have in the past had an integral part in planning festivals for our local juggling club and am currently festival director for our new festival, The Assembly of Awesome. I am also serving on the fun fund committee for this year’s IJA festival. I’ve also taught juggling classes at YMCAs and after school classes for years.

  As for what I would like to try and do for the IJA, I would like to use my business skills to help get the IJA more on track and self-sufficient. More importantly I would really like to find ways to encourage more skill sets to join our ranks.

  One final note is for next year’s festival; I live in the Toledo, Ohio area, and next year’s festival location is less than 20 minutes from my home. As a result, I plan to be heavily involved, and am excited about making the festival the best the IJA has ever had!

• Nathan Wakefield

  My name is Nathan Wakefield. I have a bachelor's degree in Marketing, and I first learned to juggle while I was in college. Juggling has easily been one of the most gratifying things in my life. For the past four years, I have been part of the planning team for the annual Ann Arbor Juggling Arts festival, doing the bulk of the promotional work and some of the operational functions. For about two years I was the Chief Editor for the juggling blog Streetjuggling.com, before I was picked up as a regular columnist for the IJA's eZine when it was introduced in early 2012. If I am elected to the IJA Board, I plan on dedicating myself whole-heartedly to the position. In addition to putting forth full effort in existing projects, I have vaious ideas on how to help expand and introduce new things to the IJA. My goal is not to overall the IJA but rather to maintain its tradition, while pushing it forward in positive directions. Some of my ideas include pursuing new promotional mediums, branching out to more sponsorship opportunities, having larger integration of official IJA streaming video, and expanding eJuggle to have more features. One of my main points I would like to focus on is the IJA's mission to render service to jugglers. I would like to incorporate more ways of getting input from all IJA members so that the direction of the organization correlates with what IJA members want to see. Passion is what keeps me going in juggling, and if I am elected to the board, I will continue to use this passion to learn more, listen to others' input, and do my best to make the IJA a great place for all Jugglers.

• Scott Krause

  My name is Scott Krause. I’ve been a juggler for 12 years, starting in college when I was 18. I’ve enjoyed juggling festivals every year since, including many IJA fests. As an avid club passer, and avid new-prop attempter, I’ve spent lots of time meeting diverse members of the IJA.

  Service is one of the greatest gifts you can give back to a community, so I’ve been thinking about running for a board seat for a long time. I would make an effective, creative, and representative board member. I hold an undergraduate degree in Marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and am going to graduate with my MBA at the end of June. And my work experience in corporate America has allowed me to gain a broad understanding of how organizations run.

  My main goal as an IJA board member is to grow the membership. It means the difference between thriving and stagnating. I’m going to focus on expanding local juggling programs such as YEP, as well as making the IJA more open to groups that have long been affiliated with juggling, but have not been courted for IJA membership. I look forward to talking to everyone about the IJA’s future.

  The IJA has given me some of my favorite memories, juggling or otherwise. I want to make sure our organization remains great for future jugglers to enjoy.

• Lloyd Timberlake

  I am long-term, hardcore IJA member; my first Festival was Newark, Delaware, 1977. In London, where I lived for 25 years, I helped establish the European Jugglers Association and was the IJA’s “foreign correspondent.” (I also performed with rock groups (not my day job), juggled on stage with the Rolling Stones and juggled and unicycled in the House of Commons.) My family enjoyed “rendering assistance to jugglers” by putting up US jugglers coming to try their luck in Europe.

  My day jobs have been in communications, lately advising big companies (Mars, PricewaterhouseCoopers) foundations (Rockefeller, Hewlett), and international organizations (Inter-American Development Bank, World Business Council for Sustainable Development) on strategies. (Google “Lloyd Timberlake”.) As I move toward retirement, I want to use this experience to help the IJA with fundraising and communications. I particularly want to build on the Board’s excellent recent work and use our network of juggling clubs to get the IJA into more schools, getting more of those school kids into the IJA.

  Otherwise, I live near Washington, DC, juggle and unicycle at the local Y and community center, and look for forward to rendering more assistance to more jugglers. See you in Winston-Salem.

• Erin Stephens

  My name is Erin Stephens, and I am a performer based in Durango, Colorado. I have served on the IJA Board of Directors for the past two years, focusing my attention on the IJA's education and outreach programs, as well as increasing the organization's international impact. If re-elected to the board, I plan to continue strengthening and improving these programs, while working to increase the IJA's relevance in the global juggling community.

  In 2010, I founded the Youth Education Project (YEP) along with Kevin Axtell and Kim Laird. The vision of YEP is to bring high-quality juggling instruction to schools and youth programs around the world. After two YEP trainings, we have a total of twenty-five representatives across the US who have brought juggling into the lives of over 1,000 youth. Within the next one to two years, we hope to expand internationally.

  In June 2011, I organized the first IJA Regional Competition (IRC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, which was a major event at the Barullo International Circus Arts Festival. This program brings the IJA Stage Championship model into other major juggling and circus festivals in the world. The event in Guadalajara was a huge success, and we brought awareness of the IJA to a region that previously knew little about the organization. In the upcoming year, we plan to hold IRCs in Brazil and Chile.

  I was instrumental in the founding of Props 2 U - a program that collects prop donations to send to needy juggling education programs around the world. Since 2010 over 700 juggling props have been donated to programs in the US, Afghanistan, Bolivia, and Ethiopia.

  I strongly believe in the mission of the IJA and hope you will support me in continuing to "render assistance to fellow jugglers" as an elected IJA board member.

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Duties and Expectations of Board Members

The IJA Board of Directors manages this nonprofit corporation for the benefit of its members. The board is composed of seven people, with elected directors serving two-year terms. Approximately half of the seats are up for election each summer.

The directors are asked to meet in person at the summer festival. Each board member sits on one or more committees, is expected to communicate regularly by email, must have web access, and will attend phone meetings about once a month. Directors should expect to spend some hours each week on behalf of the IJA.

In addition, all candidates should understand that the members of the Board of Directors are legally responsible as fiduciaries in setting the goals and policies of the IJA, managing its finances, overseeing its employees (if any), and administering its programs. At all times, the members of the Board of Directors must act in good faith and in the best interest of the corporation.

This is a great opportunity for you "to render assistance to fellow jugglers."

The Election: Voting

An IJA mailing to be sent in late May will contain a ballot that can be mailed in (or copied and mailed in) to vote in the election. Alternatively you can vote in person at the summer festival.

Each mailed ballot must be in its own separate, sealed envelope with the following written on the outside of the envelope:

1. the member's printed name
2. the member's signature
3. the member's seven-digit access code

The signed, numbered, sealed envelope containing one ballot must be mailed in another envelope (multiple family members may mail all their inner envelopes in the same outer envelope -- be sure to apply sufficient postage).

Mail your ballot to:

• International Jugglers’ Association Election

Mail-in ballots must be received by one hour before the annual membership meeting starts at the Festival.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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