News
Board seats two new directors as two chapters begin new chairs
Yolanda Pruitt-Ames and Arjun Talwar-Hughes joined the board January 1; Priya Ranganathan and Marcus Idowu began as chapter chairs the same month.
NANA's board of directors met January 15 at national headquarters, its first meeting since two new directors were seated and two chapters began the year under new chairs.
New directors
Yolanda Pruitt-Ames, executive director of the Council of Early Childhood Educators, and Arjun Talwar-Hughes, chief executive of the Council of Municipal Transit Planners, joined the board effective January 1, filling seats won on the September 2024 member ballot. Both serve three-year terms under the bylaws adopted in 2024's review, with a maximum of two consecutive terms.
Pruitt-Ames represents the Southeast chapter on the board; Talwar-Hughes represents Pacific Northwest. Neither had previously served on a NANA committee, though both have chaired committees within their own organizations: Pruitt-Ames leads CECE's 11,000-member education network, and Talwar-Hughes runs CMTP's advocacy work with the Federal Transit Administration.
Two chapters, two new chairs
The same month, two of NANA's six chapters began the year with new volunteer leadership:
Great Lakes: Priya Ranganathan, deputy executive director of the Great Lakes Orchard Growers Association, became chapter chair.
Mid-Atlantic: Marcus Idowu, chief operating officer of the Society of Accessible Design Professionals, became chapter chair.
Chapter chairs are unpaid volunteer positions with no fixed term length; a chair serves until the chapter's own membership selects a successor. Neither the Great Lakes nor the Mid-Atlantic chapter changed its meeting cadence or signature programs with the change in leadership: Great Lakes keeps its monthly roundtable and Winter Roundtable, and Mid-Atlantic keeps its bi-monthly policy briefings and its role hosting Advocacy Day each April.
A chapter chair doesn't inherit a blank slate. You inherit a roundtable that's been meeting on the third Thursday of the month for years, and your job for the first few months is mostly not to break it.
— Julian Achterberg, Director of Membership and Chapter Relations
Four leadership changes took effect in a single month: two board seats, two chapter chairs, without a change to any chapter's programming calendar or the board's own committee structure. The board's next scheduled action on committee assignments and officer terms falls in January 2026, when Board Chair Gordon Ashcombe's two-year term concludes.
Directors seated in January serve alongside four continuing officers (Chair Gordon Ashcombe, Vice Chair Dominic Ferrante, Treasurer Haruko Tanaka, and Secretary Benjamin Oduya), none of whose terms were up for renewal at this meeting. Celeste Vranas and Margaret Oyelaran continue as directors-at-large.
What the board took up
The January meeting is largely administrative: seating new directors, confirming committee assignments, and reviewing the prior quarter's finances ahead of the fiscal year's midpoint in December. This year's meeting also included a briefing from Director of Membership and Chapter Relations Julian Achterberg on the transition at both chapters, covering handoff logistics rather than any change in direction.
No bylaws changes were on the agenda. The board's next scheduled bylaws review is not due until 2027, following the three-year cycle set after the 2024 review added the past-chair seat and three-year director terms. Officer elections are next due at the January 2026 meeting, when Chair Gordon Ashcombe's two-year term concludes.