CASW executive director Rosalind Reid to retire
Rosalind Reid has served as executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW) since 2013.
Following more than a decade of exemplary service as executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW), Rosalind Reid has notified the board of directors she will retire later this year. Reid has served in this role since September 2013, on the heels of distinguished leadership roles at Harvard University and American Scientist magazine. Reid was a member of CASW’s board from 2007 to 2011. She went on to serve as CASW’s Program Director from 2012 to 2013.
Reid’s contributions to CASW have been exceptional as she brought to bear her deep knowledge and wide array of talents. Since 1960, CASW has been dedicated to promoting excellence in science news. During Reid’s tenure as executive director, and largely due to her vision, CASW has expanded our programming, conceived and implemented our Science Journalism Initiative, re-aligned the organization’s fundraising strategies, added new fellowships and awards, established and strengthened international science-writing collaborations, and redesigned our website. Major projects during Reid’s tenure have included working with leadership and collaborators to organize, fund, develop, and carry out the highly successful 2017 World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco. This conference drew 1,200 science journalists from nearly every continent and marked the first time that the World Conference was held in the United States.
As program director and later as executive director, Reid crafted eight compelling and cutting-edge programs for the ScienceWriters annual conference, co-organized with the National Association of Science Writers. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reid worked selflessly to ensure CASW’s financial and programmatic stability, which included shifting the organization’s operations and the annual ScienceWriters conference to online formats.
Over the years, Reid has expanded CASW’s staffing and contract work, managed three different administrators and spun off the program director duties into a role of its own. As part of CASW’s Science Journalism Initiative, Reid has created and launched several key programs, including the National Science-Health-Environment Reporting Fellowships, run in partnership with the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She also pulled together the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award, Showcase, and CASW Connector. She worked with the ComSciCon student organization to create ComSciCon-SciWri, a series of workshops leveraging the annual ScienceWriters conference to give science graduate students mentored experiences in journalism. In 2017, Reid was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Crucial to CASW’s success in the past decade have been the many partnerships with non-profit organizations, professional societies, foundations, and other philanthropies that Reid has initiated and meticulously maintained throughout her tenure. Through these relationships, Reid raised $5.5 million in support of CASW programming. She also rose to the challenge when the CASW board asked her to replace industry contributions with philanthropic support, to limit conflicts of interest.
The board of directors wholeheartedly thanks Ros for her many years of dedicated service to our mission. She will be deeply missed for her highly effective work, her warm collegiality, and much more. Our celebration of her tenure and achievements with CASW will continue throughout this year. The board agrees that CASW could not have evolved into the robust, productive organization it is today without Ros’s leadership, diplomacy, and myriad other talents.
Board President Robin Lloyd has appointed a search committee to identify CASW’s next executive director. The committee will shortly post an advertisement for the executive director position. We seek the most qualified, competitive, and diverse pool of candidates possible to help lead CASW into the future.
The board is pleased and grateful that Reid will stay on at least through the fall to orchestrate the November ScienceWriters2024 meeting in Raleigh, NC. She will continue to administer grants she has brought in and will be on hand to help the new executive director settle in. You may contact Robin Lloyd or Search-Committee chair Richard Harris with any questions about the search.
More information about CASW and its accomplishments is detailed on our website casw.org.
