From the President

Ritchie Bryant, MS, CDI, CLIP-R Board President

the guidelines established by the board. However, the board can hold the CEO accountable for any and all policies the board developed.

Clarifying the roles between the board and operations results in a healthy, successful separation of roles and functions; it also prevents conflicts if the board attempts to get involved in operations. Furthermore, the board has a fiduciary duty to apply our best ethical considerations and our responsibility is to ensure the organization runs smoothly and effectively. If the board doesn’t consider other possibilities that would benefit us in the long run, our ethical obligations to RID are violated. us — a trial-and-error approach, if you will. Many other non-profit organizations with equally noble missions and surprisingly similar challenges have gone down this path before us. This is why the current RID board incorporates the guidance of SME familiar with best practices and carries expertise on issues and aspects of our policy-making processes. The SME will work closely with the board, headquarters staff, and members to craft effective policies. As we continue the work in aligning RID with the diversifying demographics of America, SME will be carefully chosen who best share those goals. Members’ input is still very much welcome and valued as the board serves individuals on the front lines.

Ritchie Bryant, MS, CDI, CLIP-R lives in Texas. He is a graduate of Gallaudet University and McDaniel College.

This issue focuses on ethics, which provides me with the perfect opportunity to talk about the board’s ethical decision-making process as it applies to RID policies and governance.

We all can agree that ethics are extremely important, but so many people question the RID Board of Directors’ decisions on many occasions. By examining our work as a board, we can then determine whether our decisions are made based on ethics or not.

First: does the Board of Directors apply ethics to itself? Absolutely. While each board member has individual sets of ethics, we are bound and guided by specific principles, such as the RID Code of Professional Conduct, training, and so much more. What drives the board primarily are our legal and fiduciary duties. For example, the Enron fiasco (https. wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal) resulted in a federal law governing board behaviors and outcomes, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Such legislative steps (https:// enwikipedia.wikipedia.org/wiki/SarbanesOxley_Act) have changed the governance landscape.

In practice, the RID board’s scope is policy governance without heavy involvement in daily operations; the CEO and headquarters staff are responsible for operationalizing It is unethical for the board to become involved in operations.

The board also has a different set of ethical imperatives — our fiduciary duties — to adhere to. The board also has an essential function: ensure that the policy-making processes at RID are informed by best practices from within and outside the organization. This is why non-profit organizations, even membership-driven ones, routinely bring in subject matter experts (SME) to help craft effective policies. Since the board has the latitude to establish policy at the highest level within the organization in virtually every realm, including legal, financial, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), we must make the best possible decisions with all the options in front of us.

RID should be proud of how far we have come. If we look at RID’s storied past, the work the board has done was typically through a collaborative effort that was and continues to be volunteer-led. As the interpreting profession begins to evolve into a more sophisticated vocation with more complex interplaying layers, our small, mighty pool of volunteers is increasingly called on to serve RID in roles outside their area of expertise. Despite their dedication and best intentions, this practice can sometimes lead RID on a long and winding road (or even switchback paths at times). RID’s incredibly dedicated volunteer leaders have been an enormous asset to the organization. It is time to build up our collective expertise to pursue RID’s vision more effectively. An important part of this is to bring in SME, including those who can examine matters through a DEI lens.

So the question foremost in my mind as I work with the board is: would continuing the trial-and-error approach be an ethical way of running our organization? Does this approach best serve our communities? Are there novel and evidence-based approaches that we can use to serve our communities that we are not aware of because we haven’t looked outside our sphere of influence?

In the past few months, the board and headquarters have had conversations with SME that made us realize how much we do not know. If you ask whether I feel confident that this practice of actively incorporating SME to guide RID going forward will allow the elevation of both our members and the communities we serve, I’d say yes.

The infusion of ethical governance principles leads to proactive decision-making, which leads to effective responses. As we embrace proactive decision-making, adherence to ethics is a catalyst for change. The board remains committed to communicating those organizational shifts as changes are enacted at the governance level.

FROM THE CEO

Star Grieser, MS, CDI, ICE-CCP Chief Executive Officer

Star Grieser lives in Virginia. She is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology and McDaniel College. professional standards of behavior. How can RID and other stakeholders verify knowledge, skills, abilities and education? One way is an educational requirement of a bachelor degree or educational equivalency application, and another way is through assessments of fundamental knowledge of ASL interpreting, ethical decision-making, cultural competency, and the ability to perform interpreting tasks. Upholding expectations of these professional standards are typically accomplished through membership participation, recertification requirements of continuing education and skills professional development, and enforcing adherence to the CPC.

These actions take the basic principle of “Be professional. Do a good job. Be a good person. Don’t share my business,” and turn it into something measurable, valid, and reliable (and therefore legally defensible).

Remove any one thing from “Be professional. Do a good job. Be a good person. Don’t share my business,” and certification is weakened. Remove any measurement, validation, and reliability from “Be professional. Do a good job. Be a good person. Don’t share my business,” and certification is weakened.

If you ask Deaf people what they want in an interpreter, answers will vary, but most be along the lines of wanting an interpreter who shows up on time, is skilled, has a good attitude, and is ethical. Such traits are at the crux of the NAD-RID Code of Professional Conduct: Be professional. Do a good job.

Be a good person. Don’t share my business.

At RID headquarters, ethics, the Ethical Practice System (EPS) and the Code of Professional Conduct (CPC) have been on our minds quite a bit lately as we begin the process of revising the EPS. The Ethics Committee recently hosted a series of virtual town halls to ask members and consumers to share what their experiences with EPS and what they wanted to see in our system, and how the complaint process could be improved overall. We collected a great deal of useful feedback.

We know the need for EPS reform is very much present. The current scope of EPS is very limited, the intent of EPS is at times insufficient, and the unintended impact of EPS has often seemed to miss the mark. Or perhaps the expectation of what EPS should be able to achieve (what members and consumers want) does not match what EPS should actually be (one system – of many – of accountability). It seems this is not clear to our members, and worse, it’s all too often not clear to our consumers.

Let’s switch gears just for a bit. Another integral part of RID, of course, is certification. Certification itself is both a verification of minimal knowledge, skills, abilities, and education for professional practice, and a promissory note for certificants to uphold certain So how does this tie into the EPS? EPS and its relevant policies and processes are focused on protecting the certification program, which is designed to protect consumers. When headquarters staff who adhere to policy that certified members must maintain good standing or complete a certain amount of professional or skills development, or when the RID board approves a policy to take disciplinary action against those who cheated in earning CEUs, this helps protect the certification system. Certification helps promote accountability and professionalism, and when that is not maintained, the EPS comes into play. Again, all this is designed to protect consumers of interpreting services, Deaf or hearing.

Many have said, “There’s always an exception to the rule.” While in theory this is probably true, RID won’t and can’t make exceptions. Doing so weakens the certification program as a whole. We often hear things such as,

“I interpret in children’s hospitals, losing my certification would deprive Deaf people of a qualified interpreter…”

“I’ve been a member-in-good-standing for 30 plus years and have paid on time/completed my CEUs each time…”

“Mistakes were made! It’s not my fault…”

We get that; many of us at headquarters are consumers and interpreters ourselves. If RID were to start making exceptions based on judgment calls, extenuating circumstances, or worse, based on friendships and favoritism, this would be a step towards the precipice of a very, very slippery slope — one that weakens the integrity of certi-