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This year is a big transition year for everyone. Cecilia’s retirement comes with a lot of sadness for many of us, but we are very happy to have Amber McClarin take on the role of NCP’s incoming Executive Director. Amber was introduced and welcomed to the board.

We also welcomed Natalia Boucher as Co-CAO President with Jennifer Flores. Natalia will represent the CAO on the board and Jennifer will represent the CAO at the EC. Eli Diamond is the new Co-Junior-at-Large Representative with Agnes Regeczkey. All were welcomed to the first board meeting of the term.

We reviewed the results of the board survey that was conducted last May. The major concern discussed was how information gets communicated to the membership. I will work with Amber to create a new format for the newsletter that will help spotlight the central issues the board is dealing with, both challenging and positive. I gave a summary of the July 17 faculty meeting. A couple of important issues were brought up, including the status of Research Psychoanalysts with the BPPE. All the California psychoanalytic institutes (which have now formed a task force) were told in early 2021 to remove the Research Psychoanalyst category from their application to be considered for an exemption. We did make the decision to do that to enable the Institute to open and hold classes. We were not able to accept Research Psychoanalysts last year but the Task Force and lobbyists that were hired to help make our issues be heard, continue to have discussions with the BPPE to get that changed. We are awaiting decisions by the BPPE on this matter. It was agreed that Research Psychoanalysts (RAs) have a non-voting board seat (until a voting seat is approved with a bylaws amendment) and together we can look for solutions to re-establish the Research Analyst program. The second issue discussed was the question of when to count supervisory hours. Recommendations were made and the EC will finalize this. Term limits were also discussed but would need bylaw changes. The governance committee is working on making recommendations for amendments to the Bylaws and/or highlighting areas where changes are needed. All amendments must go through a process of proposal, discussion, and if enough support, will be subject to a vote of the membership for approval.

The position of our Archivist, Vladimir, ended June 30. We are very grateful to him for his work with NCP over the past 4 years and continue to look for ways to continue to raise funds to support this preservation and documentation project. Jimmy Fisher wrote a letter to the Board concerning the importance of supporting the work we started as it is a valuable asset to our organization.

Gabrielle presented a board orientation, which is done at the beginning of each fiscal year. Amber is working on a COVID policy, which we will send out very soon. Jill reported about the ACPEinc and their continued efforts to become approved by the Department of Education. There did seem to be some encouraging news on that front. The Admissions Committee is busy with interviews of 8 applicants. The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program is full and will continue with Zoom online classes in 2022-2023. Next month the Board will look at the year-end financials.

Paulene Popek