Mark Beckwith Named Executive Director
Mark Beckwith of Bartlesville, OK, a founder of Nevus Outreach, Inc. and father of Megan, who has a giant nevus, has been tapped to fill the empty executive director position. The board of directors recently created the position as part of a larger goal to improve fundraising efforts and spearhead the development of new media materials and educational opportunities. Beckwith was appointed in December of 2003 for a term of one year.
Following is an interview with the new executive director:
I am a nevus-dad. My daughter Megan Rose was born in 1996 with a Bathing Trunk Nevus and Neurocutaneous Melanocytosis. She had a couple surgeries in the first four months of her life, when we began to see symptoms of NCM develop. We ended the surgery immediately because we didn't want to encumber her short life with nothing but hospitals. In 1997 I co-founded Nevus Outreach along with my wife, Kathy, and two other nevus families who met on the internet. In 1998, Megan's symptoms went away without explanation. She turned eight last week.
In my past life I was a professional in the Performing Arts business, first as an artist (singing opera) and later as a booking agent, manager, and empresario, networking people together and doing things they said couldn't be done. Because the Performing Arts world is made up of nonprofit organizations, I gained a lot of experience in nonprofit operations.
To equip Nevus Outreach for the next phase of its natural growth. When the organization started, we were all volunteer, and we raised 6,000 grassroots dollars that first year. We had about 40 members. Seven years later, Nevus Outreach is more than ten times larger (in all ways!). There is more to do than can be done "in your spare time." (Yeah, right). We have been losing ground. Since I am freelance, self-employed, and working at home, I was in a position to pick up some of the slack as a staff person. Nevus Outreach is a dream I didn't know I had until Megan was born. Now, I'd do just about anything to see it rise to the challenge of finding a cure or treatment for people with congenital nevi.
My personal goal is to identify a cure or treatment. Barring that, my more realistic goal is to see Nevus Outreach develop to the point where it will run without our help and outlive us.
The Nevus Outreach long term goals will be revisited by the Board at their first-ever Board Retreat to be held in July before the 2004 Conference in Columbus, Ohio. I expect our existing mission statement to remain largely if not completely intact, and the Board to understand better what we should be focusing on. It is a necessary process in nonprofits which is timely for us. In a nutshell, I think we will continue our work to propagate information to nevus families and their communities, and the medical community as well. We will continue to search for cause, cure and treatment (this means fundraising is more vital than EVER). We have already begun to step up our advocacy activities. Oh, and how about this new web site! Yay!
Only a big THANK YOU for pulling together to make Nevus Outreach a huge success in every way. Thanks especially for your understanding at this crucial time in our organization's development. After our great staff experiment in 2001-2002, when we had the pleasure of having Kathy Wright as our interim executive, we could only ride Kathy's momentum so far before things started slipping again. We recognized that our single highest priority had to be professional staff. Frankly, being the actual staff is not what I was thinking at the time, but I am certainly enjoying the work. There's a lot of it, so I want to continue to thank everyone for their patience!
See you in Columbus!
