Movers and Shakers on the PMI Board
PMWT: How many members did PMI have when you were president? What were the big issues for PMI at that time? Who else served on the board with you?
Max: In 1982, the membership of PMI was just over 3,300. There followed a significant upsurge with the spread of local chapters where more people could get involved and could see the benefits of local networking. By the end of 1988 at the end of my term as chairman, the membership had almost doubled to 6,200. We were on a roll.
What were the pressing issues of the day? They were many and varied, in fact, too many to recount, but likely typical of any Board responsibility. But I think always highest on the agenda was how do we best move forward within our limits of financial, staff and volunteer resources. The age of intellectual property copyright protection and aggressive product sales pitches had not yet been born!
The question of when I served and who served with me is rather more difficult because they were many and varied over the years. The best I can offer is as follows: I was first elected to the PMI Board in 1983 as VP-Member Services. At that time Regula Brunies was Chairman, Ken Hartley was President, John Murphy was VP-Chapter Activities, Wayne San Filippo was VP-Functional Operations and Harvey Levine was Secretary. David Morton was past-Chairman, Dr. John Adams was the Educational Director, Dr. Terry Kinnear was PMQ Editor in Chief and Bonnie McGarr was our paid Executive Director.
I remained closely associated with the Board in one capacity or another until 1988 when I completed my term as Chairman. During that time many people came and went in various capacities, for example: (the late) Brian Fletcher as VP-Chapter Activities (1984), Dr. Gordon Davies as VP-Finance (1984) and Terry Anderson, VP-Functional Operations (1984). John Rollins became VP-Finance (1985) and (the late) Doug Egan took over from me as VP-Member Services (1985).
In 1986 there was a sea-change and North America was segregated into three Regions: Rod Dawson became VP-Region I (i.e. Canada), Patrice Murphy and Jenny Strbiak represented Regions II and III respectively. Al Badger came on board as VP-Technical Activities. In 1987, taking over from Brian Fletcher, I was elected President with automatic elevation to Chairman in 1988. Bob Yourzak joined the Board as VP-Public Relations and Larry Woolshlager took over VP-Region II (1987). In 1988 Jim Blethen joined the Board as VP-Technical Activities, and Fred Baker became VP-Administration. Warren Allen and Frank Jenes represented Regions I and III respectively.
I must say that all of these people put in long hours working for the Institute and made remarkable contributions. Not that all was sweetness and light, Board members typically held very strong views and were not well equipped in the art of consensus-building. Consequently, there were many times when I observed bitter exchanges. Now and again there might have been personal agendas at play for personal gain - but not often. We were concerned for the good of the members and PMI's financial viability.
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Service
on the PMI Board of Directors 
