Ruth Duerr Candidate Statement

I am affiliated with the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship and have my bio and full CV on their website at https://ronininstitute.org/research-scholars/ruth-duerr/.  I’ve been a member of ESIP for a very, very long time having held leadership positions in a number of clusters and committees over the years including a stint on the ESIP Board.  I currently co-chair the Semantic Harmonization cluster and am a member of several other clusters.  Strangely enough it was ESIP participation that won me the first few grants that I ever had funded, and I must admit that this is an organization that I feel really at home with and where a lot of my friends hang out.  

I’ve been a member of the Finance Committee for the last two years, so am very familiar with their needs, processes and the goals and issues that are currently in work.  In particular, ESIP’s current cash reserve is just sitting in a bank account and not even earning interest. How to change that and proceed forward in an ethical way is one item that probably will be resolved over the next year.  I also have a bit of experience with what I used to call "forensic accounting", based on experiences during summer breaks when I was in college where I would be invited into various small businesses who had no clue about whether they were really making money or not.  I would set them up with sets of books and backfill several years worth of P&L’s, cash flow statements, etc. so they would know!  That was definitely a learning experience as I expect that this would be.