Major shifts in Visit Estes Park leadership are being made just two months after new CEO Sarah Leonard’s tenure at the marketing district began.
“We have taken the first steps in refreshing the culture and reorganizing,” Leonard said in an interview with the Estes Valley Voice. In making that transition, two positions were eliminated, creating two elevated positions.
“I’m reassigning duties, and we’re refining responsibilities as we go through this transition,” she said at that time.
In a Feb. 20 newsletter, Leonard said the transition is a “thoughtful reorganization” of VEP going forward.
“This is not change for the sake of change,” she wrote. “It is a deliberate effort to refresh our culture and holistically review the systems and processes that guide our work every day. Even strong organizations, like VEP, accumulate static methods,” Leonard said.
Marketing Director Rachel Ward Opperman and Operations Director Rebecca Domenico-Gelsinger are no longer with VEP.
“Working alongside the Visit Estes Park team and the Estes Park community over the past eight years has been a wonderful, fulfilling experience and one I will continue to think of fondly,” said Oppermann in a statement released by VEP.
In place of those two positions, Leonard will be hiring two new employees: a vice president of visitor experience and a data scientist and technology specialist. She hopes to fill the jobs by the end of the first quarter.
The individual chosen for the vice president position will be responsible for the strategic design, alignment, and stewardship of the full visitor lifecycle for Estes Park and the surrounding area. The data scientist will support VEP’s data intelligence, digital systems, marketing and stewardship performance measurement, and organizational reporting through data collection, analysis, visualization, and research.
According to Leonard, the changes should not affect the organization’s budget.
“The goal is to keep it within budget,” Leonard told the board at their meeting on Feb. 17. She and Finance Director Mike Zumbaugh will be working with the budget and “seeing where the budget kind of shakes out after this recent transition, and come back to the board in March,” she said.
To fulfill VEP’s marketing efforts, Leonard told the board that no outside agency changes are anticipated. Once the positions are finalized, however, requests for proposals for a rebranding effort will be forthcoming. In addition, this year’s budget has set aside funds to rebuild the VEP website.
There’s not a consideration to change the logo, “but I think that a rebranding effort would really bring in more community feedback for how the community looks at, or feels, about Estes Park as a destination, as well as what we’re promising to visitors,” Leonard said. “All of that can inform our marketing efforts moving forward, including the operational partnership level.”
In other employee news, the VEP board approved a plan to establish a shared cultural arts position with the Estes Arts District. VEP will contribute $27,000 toward the salary of the EAD program arts director, and the EAD will serve as the employer of record for the person holding the position.
According to Dana Paiement, co-president of EAD, the organization is still reviewing final details for the position, but it is expected to be finalized by next week.