A special election is called when there is a vacancy in an Executive Board position. The Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Music Therapy Association will be sending ballots to members on November 23rd to vote for Vice President of Membership (VPoM) who will be serving for a brief term starting December, 2020 and finishing mid-April 2021 after MAR-AMTA Executive Board regular elections occur. Up until the 23rd, members may nominate additional consenting candidates to the Nominating Committee. Contact the Nominating Committee at pastpresident@gmail.com.
The Nominating Committee is pleased to present four candidates who have volunteered to run for the VPoM position. Please note Candidate 2 has withdrawn nomination.
Candidate 2 PDF WITHDREW NOMINATION
A note on anonymizing voting for this special election: Over the past year the Immediate Past President, Michael Viega, and CHADI representative, Gabriela Asch-Ortiz, held a series of online meetings for general membership and affinity group members. The purpose of these meetings was to increase access to, and interest in, these elections through providing transparency around the election process and examining existing barriers and structures within the MAR-AMTA that might prevent equity and inclusion in the nomination and election process. Many shared how anonymizing voting could help reduce the impact of implicit biases on the election process, (i.e. race, gender, disability), as well as allow space for newer voices who may be lesser known within the region. The Nominating Committee is responding to this collective feedback by implementing anonymized voting for this special election. While these decisions were based upon membership feedback, research has also shown the role of implicit biases as impacting the likelihood of various applicants in obtaining a desired position (Bertrand & Mulainathan, 2004; Goldin & Rouse, 2000; Jost et al., 2009; Gündemir, Homan, De Dreu & Van Vugt, 2014; Levinson & Young, 2010 Girod et al., 2016).
The Nominating Committee hopes to learn from this process and receive membership feedback about their experience in the anonymous voting process in preparation for MAR-AMTA’s regular elections in the spring, 2021. You can submit feedback directly to the Nominating Committee at pastpresident@maramta.org.
References
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. American economic review, 94(4), 991-1013.
Girod, S., Fassiotto, M., Grewal, D., Ku, M. C., Sriram, N., Nosek, B. A., & Valantine, H. (2016). Reducing implicit gender leadership bias in academic medicine with an educational intervention. Academic Medicine, 91(8), 1143-1150.
Goldin, C., & Rouse, C. (2000). Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of” blind” auditions on female musicians. American economic review, 90(4), 715-741.
Gündemir, S., Homan, A. C., De Dreu, C. K., & Van Vugt, M. (2014). Think leader, think white? Capturing and weakening an implicit pro-white leadership bias. PloS one, 9(1), e83915.
Jost, J. T., Rudman, L. A., Blair, I. V., Carney, D. R., Dasgupta, N., Glaser, J., & Hardin, C. D. (2009). The existence of implicit bias is beyond reasonable doubt: A refutation of ideological and methodological objections and executive summary of ten studies that no manager should ignore. Research in organizational behavior, 29, 39-69.
Levinson, J. D., & Young, D. (2010). Implicit gender bias in the legal profession: An empirical study. Duke J. Gender L. & Pol’y, 18, 1.