The Director’s Chair

THIS ONE MIGHT read as a little personal. Over five-plus decades, I have been blessed with leadership and mentors with strong examples of how we make tough decisions. In Financial Services, IT Outsourcing, Databased Marketing Solutions, Law Enforcement Training, and now helping close the workforce gap across the State of Arkansas. The one I distinctly remember, and I quote: “Bill, you decide by doing the right thing for the right reason…and you can’t go wrong.”

That has become a guiding principle of mine, and I’ve also been fortunate to surround myself with a team with like values. The team at the Arkansas Center for Data Sciences, now dba Apprenticely, should be congratulated for publishing a monthly newsletter that many of our partners and followers look forward to receiving—generally on the last Friday of every month—earlier if it falls on a major holiday.

I want to acknowledge our Editor, Jim Morgan, and our Marketing Director, Clint Hankinson, for their leadership and execution of the newsletter that began in 2019.

This July edition, our 89 th consecutive month of publication, will be their final newsletter. We may be sending relevant information and events to our current mailing list, but it will never live up to Jim’s and Clint’s standards. They will be missed, and we wish them well.

–Bill Yoder
Executive Director