Complete Story
09/29/2017
Effros: Changing of the Guard at NCTA
The NCTA has announced that two of my favorite folks over there, Jadz Janucik and Barbara York, are finally going to hang up their armor and move to my perch in the arena, watching the unfolding drama of our industry rather than being down in the pit slugging it out every day. Congratulations to both of them for jobs well done and the decision (I think they took a little too long to make it, but then I’ve told them both that before) to finally let the younger folks engage in the day-to-day battle.
Barbara, a 36-year association employee, supervised the complex and headache-inducing staging of the NCTA’s “Cable Show” for 35 consecutive years! She also served for a time as Chief Administrative Officer and coordinated the planning of virtually all the major events the NCTA has done during that time from board meetings (yes, she’s excellent at herding cats!) to the move of the NCTA headquarters.
Since I’ve been working in this sphere for 46 years, I’ve watched and interacted with Barbara since she started. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her “blow her top”… at least not in public, and there have been many, many times she would have been totally justified in doing so! Have you ever dealt with the unions in a Chicago convention hall? Barbara is unfailingly polite, calm and pleasant to deal with in these public, high-stress moments, an attribute that, I think, probably worked to her detriment since no one in the industry could think of a better person to hand the impossibly tough assignment of running all the details of a trade show. Behind closed doors things may have been a little different, it’s true, but that’s also part of the job she did so well.
