My name is Nevin Thompson and I have been nominated as a community staff representative in the upcoming Global Voices board of directors elections being held March 16-20, 2017 (later this month). I first joined Global Voices in July 2005 as a volunteer writer, focusing on Japan, and I have been amazed and astounded by our growth since then.
I now work as a social media manager and Japan Editor, and also have recently joined the NewFrames project.
I hope you'll consider voting for me as staff representative on the Global Voices Board of Directors. There are a couple of reasons why I would be a good choice:
Thanks to the various roles I play at Global Voices (in the newsroom, on the social media team, etc.) I have a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by Global Voices for staffers.
I also come into contact and work with just about everyone on the team, and have developed good relationships and lines of communication with those people. This helps with communication and problem-solving.
I have worked with non-profits and non-profit boards since 2004 and currently sit as a board member of a non-profit society in Victoria, British Columbia, where I live.
I have experience with fiduciary oversight and understand how non-profit societies operate. My experience with project development, project planning, and managing the needs of funding partners, while staying true to the core values and mission of Global Voices, will also be helpful in the role of staff representative.
Finally, my experience and ongoing mastery of web-based communication will help inform decisions about how to make sure more and more people around the world are reading Global Voices.
Since September, 2014 I have worked as Japan Editor for Global Voices. I also help manage social media for Global Voices, notably the daily email newsletter and Facebook, and recently joined the NewsFrames team.
Besides working with Global Voices I also work as a marketing consultant and copywriter, mostly serving tourism and technology clients.
Moving between Japan and Canada over the past couple of decades has allowed me to change careers a couple of times. I started out as a high school social studies teacher, and later went on to work with community non-profit boards and then in government as an economic development consultant. Much of my work involved identifying ways government funding programs could help solve specific community problems, writing proposals to unlock funding and then working and guiding the projects to completion.
Along the way I worked as a writer (I even translated television scripts from Japanese into English for a while) before becoming a freelance marketing copywriter and web marketer in 2010. While I have learned an awful lot about online marketing over the past six or seven years, my work allows me to live almost anywhere, including Japan, where I spend about three months a year with my family.
My LinkedIn profile and more details about my professional history can be viewed here.
Once again, Global Voices board of directors elections will be held on March 16-20, 2017 (later this month). You can contact me directly on my contact page, befriend me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter at @nevin_thompson.