It took a little more than an hour, but the majority of the Visit Estes Park board of directors voted Tuesday afternoon, April 15, to hire Bill Hanbury, a national expert in destination organization leadership, as the organization’s interim CEO.
Hanbury’s role, which began April 16, will be to help VEP develop organizational stability, rebuild team collaboration, and “communicate a message of operational competence to the board, tourism industry stakeholders, government officials, clients, and the overall community,” according to a March 27 memorandum by Hanbury to the VEP Board outlining his understanding of the interim assignment.
Additionally, Hanbury wrote, “as issues emerge which may require short-term resolution, I’ll address these topics for remediation in cooperation with the Chairperson and the Board. Finally, once a new CEO is selected, I will assist in onboarding the executive, ensuring a smooth transition to new leadership.”
According to VEP Board secretary Deb Gibson, who served on the CEO search committee, hiring an outside consultant to provide internal organizational development follows the advice of Searchwide Global, the executive search firm that managed the failed search effort to hire a new chief executive officer.
“Because of what happened with the first search… they strongly stated that they did not think that they would be effective in soliciting the type of candidates that the organization should expect and should the skill set that we would want to hire for the position unless we were demonstrating to the industry that we were doing everything that we could to address what other issues there are in the organization before bringing in a new CEO,” said Gibson during Tuesday’s meeting.
Gibson was referring to the circumstances surrounding one of the two top candidates who withdrew from consideration following accusations of improper conduct at a local restaurant while the candidate was in Estes Park for a presentation to the search committee.
The results of an investigation conducted by a third-party investigator into the allegation determined that the issues of concern were unfounded.
Hanbury’s assignment is temporary and is expected to last three months.
“The purpose of being an interim CEO is to actually manage the organization on a day-to-day basis, but also remediate against issues that you may find, whether they are HR (human resources), finance, marcom (marketing communications),” Hanbury told the board during the meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Within three months, “you’re able to really get a true feel for personnel, for systems, for marcom, and for all the other things that are associated with managing a destination marketing organization, as you would any other nonprofit or any other company, and that’s really the purpose of the length of the duration of the of the assignment,” Hanbury said.
In his role, Hanbury said he would travel from his home base in Skaneateles, N.Y. to Estes Park one week every three or four weeks and be “engaged, literally on a daily basis” the rest of the time on Zoom calls.
“You may not be in Estes Park all the time, but you’re addressing issues and managing the staff, managing the organization. You’re also helping manage the board and providing good advice and counsel to the board of directors and committees,” Hanbury said.
“It’s an opportunity to meet with stakeholders and take a pulse on the organization, from stakeholders and from community leaders, that allows you to provide additional guidance to the staff and to the board around what may be best practices, or if we’re missing some things that need to be accomplished or need to be resolved. You have the opportunity to do that in this position,” he said.
Before voting to hire Hanbury, board members asked for current staff members’ opinions in determining whether to hire someone outside the organization as an interim CEO or maintain management under the current arrangement with finance officer Mike Zumbaugh, who was named interim CEO following the departure of Kara Franker last summer.
While the staff members who spoke up all praised Zumbaugh, opinions were split between retaining him as the interim CEO and hiring Hanbury.
Some staff members credited Zumbaugh with bringing staff together, onboarding new employees, and working closely with the VEP staff. Others said they felt Hanbury’s experience and abilities to analyze processes could be advantageous to the organization.
Searchwide Global recommended that VEP seek proposals for organizational assistance. In addition to receiving the interim CEO proposal from Hanbury, whose company’s name is Academy Street Collaborations LLC., Hanbury’s company also submitted a proposal to conduct an organizational assessment.
A third proposal from Washington-based Fired Up Culture was also received, but company representatives were unavailable for a VEP board interview or discussion of their proposal prior to the VEP Board’s decision Tuesday to move forward with Hanbury.