Dear Friend,
As the year comes to a close, I, along with the rest of the OpenSky team, wanted to take a moment to offer our heartfelt thanks to two outgoing members of our Board of Directors who have made profound contributions to our organization.
Tulani Grundy Meadows of Omaha and John Harms of Scottsbluff will officially conclude their tenures on our Board of Directors when the calendar flips at the end of the month. They joined the board together in 2014 and in the time since, Tulani and John have been incredible partners in our work.
Tulani is a Political Science and Human Relations Skills faculty member at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha. She holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College. Tulani practiced as a litigation attorney for an Atlanta based labor and employment firm. She also has been a Program Administrator at the Women’s Center for Advancement in Omaha and served on the boards for several Omaha-area organizations.
John joined the OpenSky board after just wrapping up an eight-year term in the Nebraska Legislature. While he was in the Unicameral, OpenSky had the privilege of working with John as he served on the Legislature’s Performance Audit Committee, Appropriations Committee and the Tax Modernization Committee. Prior to his time in the Legislature, John had a long career in education, which included a 30-year term as president of Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff.
During her tenure on the board, Tulani served as treasurer and provided key guidance around organizational finances. We also regularly leaned on her human resources expertise to help guide us on operational issues and her political science background came through in her poignant input regarding our policy work.
John’s legislative experience allowed him to provide valuable guidance on our policy work. He also would regularly join us as we met with media members and key community leaders during our travels to the Panhandle and he helped co-author multiple opinion pieces on important state policy issues.
Tulani and John have been outstanding board members, partners and friends and in a season of reflection and gratitude, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank them publicly for all they have done to help us over the years and to wish them well as they take their considerable talents and insights into their future endeavors.
I hope you also will take a chance to thank them for their work with OpenSky and their contributions to their communities and the state as a whole. Our organization and our state are better because of Tulani and John.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rebecca Firestone
Executive Director
P.S. One way to show your appreciation to Tulani and John would be to make a tax-deductible online donation to OpenSky. Aside from honoring their incredible contributions, such a donation also would help us expand our role to help forge more policies that truly benefit every Nebraskan!