Here is the excerpt from the DC Pro Chapter Constitution about officers and directors.
Article Four – Officers
Section 1: The officers of this Chapter shall be a president, a vice president, a recording secretary, a corresponding secretary and a treasurer.
Section 2: The officers shall be elected for one-year terms, which shall begin at the next annual installation of officers and shall end at the following installation.
Article Five – Directors
Section 1: There shall be elected from the membership of this Chapter six directors who shall meet at least nine times per year with the officers of the Chapter to formulate plans and procedures. These directors together with the officers of the chapter and the immediate past president shall constitute the Executive Board.
Section 2: Three directors shall be elected each year for a term commencing at the next annual installation of officers and expiring at the installation two years thereafter.
The following is an excerpt from the DC Pro Chapter’s Bylaws about duties of officers.
Article Six – Duties of Officers
Section 1: The president shall preside at all meetings, shall exercise general supervision over the affairs and activities of the Chapter, and shall serve as an ex-officio member of all committees.
Section 2: If the president is absent or incapacitated, the president’s duties shall be assumed by the vice president. The vice president shall also serve as program coordinator for the Chapter.
Section 3: The recording secretary shall keep minutes of all meetings of the Chapter and send records of the proceedings to members of the Executive Board.
Section 4: The corresponding secretary shall be the custodian of all Chapter records unless a special officer shall be appointed for that purpose, shall maintain the Chapter roster, including all records and reports on membership enrollment, and shall conduct all correspondence of the Chapter, as required.
Section 5: The treasurer shall receive all Chapter funds, keep them in one or more federally insured depositories approved by the Executive Board, and pay out funds only by direction of the Executive Board. The treasurer shall make a written monthly report to the Executive Board of all disbursements, receipts and balances.
The following are candidates for various offices and directors seats on the SPJ DC Pro Chapter board of directors for the 2024-2024 chapter year that begins July 1.
President
Denise Garner Dunbar
This past chapter year has been a strange one for our board, with the sudden illness of our president, Dee Ann Divis, last summer, then her death last fall. While I was elected chapter vice president in the last election, I have served as acting president during most of this time, and it’s been a learning experience. If elected chapter president for next chapter year, I’d like to focus on small things rather than a grand agenda. In particular, I would like to make time during our chapter board meetings to discuss issues confronting practicing journalists.
I am publisher and executive editor of the Alexandria Times, a weekly community newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia, with a print run of 15,000 and another 8,000 digital subscribers. The Times is in a city of 160,000 residents just outside of Washington, D.C., and is aided by having a well-educated population with many people who care deeply about their community. Bucking the generally negative trends in the newspaper industry, the Times has posted strong earnings the past few years and has successfully weathered the COVID-19 pandemic. The Times strives to provide a high-quality product, with an emphasis on investigative reporting and features about community members. We have won numerous awards from the Virginia Press Association for our writing, ad design and overall content.
I graduated from North Texas State University (now called the University of North Texas) in 1982 with a B.S. in journalism and a double minor in political science. After leaving North Texas, I worked for the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, North Carolina, for two years, then went to the University of Georgia, where I received an M.A. degree in political science (international relations).
From there, my husband and I settled in Alexandria, and I spent six years working as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, where I was Boris Yeltsin’s biographer. I then spent five years working for the Commonwealth of Virginia on welfare reform development, implementation and operation. After staying at home for eight years until our three children began school, I joined the Alexandria Times in 2009 as editorial page editor.
Vice President
Celia Viggo Wexler
Currently a member of the board of the DC Pro Chapter, Celia Viggo Wexler previously served on the National Press Club board of governors, and was a member of the Club’s Ethics Committee.
She is an award-winning journalist and non-fiction author. Her freelance work has appeared in The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Columbia Journalism Review, Salon, Fodor’s Travel Guide, NBC News’ online opinion site THINK, CNN Opinion, and The Nation.
As a full-time reporter, she covered banking, business and labor for the Buffalo Courier-Express, the Lafayette (Indiana) Journal & Courier, and was Albany bureau chief for American City Business Journals. She also covered the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of Thrift Supervision for American Banker.
Her first book “Out of the News: Former Journalists Discuss a Profession in Crisis” (McFarland, 2012) won a national SPJ Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) award for journalism history. Her second book, “Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) earned a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly.
Corresponding Secretary
Amy Fickling
I served in the role of corresponding secretary for several years while also being chapter treasurer, then have been elected to the position three times. This will be my fourth time running for a term as corresponding secretary in recent years. The corresponding secretary is in charge of chapter membership, but I also have been developing a definition of this board officer role for the new digital world, so it has come to include responsibility for putting together the chapter’s newsletter along with all other membership correspondence, including presentation of material on the chapter’s website.
I’ve also served on the chapter’s (and for a time, on national SPJ’s) SDX Foundation for a number of years, currently serving interim president of the chapter’s SDX Foundation of Washington, D.C., its education arm. I was honored as the chapter’s Distinguished Service Award winner in 2019, recognizing long-time service to the DC Pro Chapter, as I have held every office on the board. I have been active in the SPJ DC since 1985 while working as a reporter and/or editor at a variety of media outlets in the metropolitan area, including as assistant news editor at the McClatchy-Tribune News Service (was there when the service was closed in 2014). I’m currently a copy editor at Warren Communications News, working on specialty publications International Trade Today, Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily.
I also am a member of the National Press Club and serve on the committee that produces the Club’s weekday daily newsletter in rotation with several other editors.
Having been chapter president (1991) and a two-term national SPJ board member – as Region 2 director (1993 to 1997) – after moving “up the ladder” from recording secretary and Dateline newsletter editor as positions locally, I’ve seen participation in the chapter wax and wane, and witnessed the rise of many other niche journalism groups that may have drawn away some of our potential new members. But the broad-based efforts for all journalists that SPJ stands for still have an appeal, and I want to see the chapter continue to attract new minds and voices that carry these efforts forward into the future — especially on journalism ethics and seeking truth to report it. We work well with other journalism organizations, but would like to grow our membership – that is a task I will oversee, should I be elected. As we return to some semblance of pre-pandemic activity, let us continue doing our jobs, continue getting out the news, and continue identifying with each other as journalists of talent, truth and energy. Together through SPJ DC we are all stronger.
Treasurer
Dan Kubiske
I am the current treasurer for the DC Pro Chapter and am seeking re-election. Besides serving as the chapter treasurer I am also the co-chair of the national SPJ International Community.
I have worked as a freelance journalist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Honduras; and, of course, in the Washington, D.C., area for 35 years. (Full disclosure: my wife was a U.S. foreign service officer. I just tagged along as her assignments took us around the world.) Members of the DC Chapter provided some great leads for my overseas work back in the early 1990s shortly after I joined SPJ. When I returned from Asia in 1994, I wanted to give back to the organization. Since then, I have done what I can for the chapter, including serving as a member of the board of directors, vice president, president and now candidate for treasurer again.
I hope I have helped move the chapter forward. And now, after 30+ years of membership in this organization, I like to think of myself as part of the living memory of the chapter and as one who encourages newer members to step up and take over the reins of leadership to move the chapter in new and exciting directions. For now, I continue to do what I can to help the chapter grow and remain an important part of the Washington journalism community.
I also am a member of the National Press Club in Washington and remain a (distant) member of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, where I served on the board of governors.
Board of Directors
Hanan Daqqa
Hanan Daqqa is an independent multimedia journalist in Northern Virginia and an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University. She was selected as an SPJ MediaFest22 Freelance Fellow. Her stories have appeared in The Lily, Washington Parent and the Fairfax County Times, among other publications. This is her first time running for the DC Pro Chapter board.
Will Schick
Will Schick was appointed to the DC Pro Chapter board in November 2022, to serve the remaining months of the final year of a two-year board seat vacated early by a former board member. He is seeking election to a new two-year term.
Schick is editor in chief of Street Sense Media. He has an MFA degree in creative writing from American University and currentlyis pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at New York University. He also was a Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellow from 2021 to 2022. In February 2023, he joined the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute. Prior to becoming a journalist, he served for 11 years in the Marine Corps.
Steve Taylor
Steve Taylor is a candidate to return to the DC Pro Chapter board as a director. He has been a chapter member since 2005 and served on the board in 2008-2011.
Taylor is a retired broadcast correspondent for ABC News and Fox News Radio. Earlier he was a White House correspondent for United Stations Radio and for Satellite News Channel. He also broadcast for WQXR-FM in New York and KNX-AM in Los Angeles. Earlier, he was a reporter for Channel 8 in Richmond, Virginia, and for New Jersey Public Television.
From 2008 through 2022, Taylor organized the DC Pro Chapter board’s annual selection of Washington, D.C., Hall of Fame inductees and Distinguished Service Award recipients. In each of those years he also arranged the recipients’ appearances and speeches at the chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame Dinner, wrangling a total of 65 honorees over 15 years.
In 2009 as a member of national SPJ’s Government Relations Committee, Steve lobbied U.S. senators and representatives for support of a National Shield Law.