From Berkeley
The Pacifica Foundation is pleased to announce that Tom Livingston will serve as its interim Executive Director. Livingston will start effective immediately. He replaces Bill Crosier who has served as iED since February 2017. Crosier had encouraged the Pacifica National Board to hire Livingston. He supported the search process done by Pacifica’s Personnel Committee.
Crosier said, “I’m excited that Livingston will be our new iED. When my colleagues on the Pacifica National Board asked me to take on this job last year, I told them I’d be glad to do it as a volunteer until we could find a well-qualified, experienced manager to take the job. We have found such a person with Tom Livingston, and I look forward to having him lead Pacifica until we can find a new regular/permanent ED.”
Livingston to serve while his firm searches for permanent ED
Tom Livingston, founder of Livingston Associates and current interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation. Photo: Livingston Associates
While serving as interim ED, Pacifica will be helping Livingston’s firm, Livingston Associates, to conduct a search for the next regular Executive Director. Livingston said, “Our organizational and staffing work is driven by the principals of first, to listen deeply to the stakeholders (board, staff, volunteers), to deeply understand the situation and mission of the organization, and using that foundation, collaboratively empower the individuals and organizations to find solutions and become more powerful, as well as identify and help select leaders who will have a profound fit with the needs of the group. We look forward to bringing this approach to Pacifica.”
“I’m very much looking forward to working with the Pacifica Board and staffs at our stations and to finding a terrific leader for Pacifica in a permanent Executive Director.”
Nancy Sorden, Chair Pro Tem of the Pacifica National Board, said, “Pacifica has so much inherent potential from its history and mission, and diverse base of listeners, supporters, and staff from all around the country and the world. So with Tom’s impressive experience with non-profit media companies and approach that emphasizes open, creative, inclusive, sound decision-making strategies, I am very optimistic we will see our way out of our current financial predicament – intact, stabilized, and on a new course for Pacifica that takes advantage of all of our stations unique contributions and serves our diverse listening communities.”
Crosier will continue as a Director on the Pacifica National Board. He was re-elected to the PNB earlier this month. He plans to work this year with others across Pacifica to make changes to the Pacifica Bylaws, in order to improve functioning of its governance, so that Pacifica can better serve the public in providing news, music, public affairs, and culture that people cannot hear anywhere else. Crosier said, “With the increasing assaults on the press and independent media, Pacifica is needed more than ever. I want to concentrate on helping our governance work more effectively to enhance and promote the Pacifica mission.”
Contact For More Information
Bill Crosier
510-316-9783
ed@pacifica.org
Nancy Sorden
240-505-7673
nsordenpfw@gmail.com
The Pacifica Foundation
Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases. Those cases include the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI.
The Pacifica Foundation operates noncommercial radio stations in five major metropolitan areas, operates the Pacifica Radio Archives with decades of historical audio, and syndicates content to over 250 affiliate stations. It invented listener-sponsored radio.