SIOP Executive Board Election Results

Four distinguished SIOP members will take their positions on the SIOP Executive Board in April 2022, following the annual elections conducted November 1 to 30, 2021. Volunteer service on the board is a hallmark of dedication and service to the profession, as well as an honor bestowed by colleagues. The newly elected officers are:

• Tara Behrend – President-Elect
• Nikki Blacksmith – External Affairs Officer
• Richard Landers – Instructional and Educational Officer
• Amy DuVernet – Professional Practice Officer

SIOP thanks all candidates for their willingness to serve and the members who voted in the election for their engagement.

Mo Wang, current President-Elect and Election Committee Chair, oversaw the SIOP election. "I am thankful to be able to be part of such an important SIOP process," he said. "I'm excited to see the steps this group takes within the Executive Board to help address SIOP's strategic goals."

More information about the new officers, including brief bios and summaries of their candidate goal statements, follows.

President-Elect Tara Behrend

Tara Behrend, PhD, has served SIOP in a multitude of volunteer positions, including External Affairs officer and The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist (TIP) editor, as well as being a member of the Fellowship Committee, Awards Committee Futures Ad Hoc Committee, and more.

Behrend, a professor at Purdue University, also has practitioner experience through working with a wide range of organizations to solve their recruitment, selection, and training issues. She has also served as the I-O Psychology Program director at the George Washington University and was a member of the Human-Technology Collaboration cross-disciplinary PhD program that is offered there. She has widely published research that has been funded through the National Science Foundation and private foundations.

In her candidate statement, Behrend explained that she is familiar with SIOP’s strategic goals, given she was an Executive Board member in 2019 when the goals were established. She acknowledges that a large part of meeting these goals will be increasing SIOP’s visibility, especially among policy makers, media, and the business community. She also thinks that membership recruitment and retention will play an essential role to addressing this. Read her full statement on the SIOP Candidates page.

External Affairs Officer Nikki Blacksmith

Nikki Blacksmith, PhD, has dedicated the last decade to increasing visibility within SIOP. Most recently, she served as the chair of the Visibility Committee, where she led a team of 50 people and seven subcommittees to develop agile processes and initiatives to increase SIOP’s external visibility. Not only has she served as Visibility Committee chair but also Media Subcommittee chair of the Visibility Committee and Subcommittee chair of the Electronic Communications Committee. She has also contributed to task forces, cowrote a column for TIP, and served on the planning committee for the Leading Edge Consortium.

Blacksmith serves as cofounder and co-CEO of Blackhawke Behavior Science. This position allows her to convey the value of I-O psychology in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by applying traditional assessment work to new contexts such as venture capital decision making. Specifically, she develops resources and learning content to educate stakeholders, including blogs that translate I-O psychology and make it more accessible to those not familiar with the field. She feels her unique experience developing collaborative efforts with interdisciplinary teams from partner organizations, including nonprofits, advocacy firms, and universities, will provide valuable insight to the External Affairs Committee.

Blacksmith’s candidate statement outlines three goals: (1) identify critical real-world problems to focus strategic efforts, (2) gather and energize collaborative partnerships, (3) create agile teams and processes within SIOP. She feels these goals can be reached by expanding upon current initiatives, as well as creating new strategies. Read her full statement on the SIOP Candidates page.

Instructional and Educational Officer Richard Landers

Richard Landers, PhD, brings unique SIOP volunteer experience, given he was the founding member of Future Scanning Task Force (2017-2018), later the Futures (ad hoc) Committee (2018-2021), and the founding chair of the Technology-enabled Workforce group (2018-) within the Government Relations and Advocacy Team (GREAT). He is also currently serving as the 2022 SIOP Annual Conference Program Committee chair, which has provided a multitude of challenges given how much event planning has changed since 2020.

Landers works as both an academic and practitioner, serving as John P. Campbell Distinguished Professor of I-O Psychology at the University of Minnesota in addition to owner of Landers Workforce Science LLC. This consultant firm focuses on helping both traditional I-O firms and Silicon Valley startups in the domain of his research interests: the interdisciplinary blending of I-O psychology and technology research to advance both fields.

In his candidate statement, Landers expressed the need for SIOP to break down barriers, particularly those between the academic and practitioner circles within the field. He also explained the importance of continuing to meet the needs of SIOP members and SIOP’s strategic goals. He laid out four main areas of focus: (1) early-interest high school and undergraduate students (2) graduate students with equal focus at master’s and doctoral levels, (3) early career professionals with equal focus on both practitioners and academics, (4) and mid-to-late career professionals. Read his full statement on the SIOP Candidates page.

Professional Practice Officer Amy DuVernet

Amy DuVernet, PhD, brings a wide range of SIOP volunteer experience into this role. She has served as a contributor and leader for the SIOP Salary Survey over a number of years (2012-2019), and also chaired the Institutional Research Committee and Membership Analytics Subcommittee. She has also served as a columnist for TIP (Learning about Learning; 2016-2017). Currently, she is leading an effort to build a succession plan for identifying, recruiting, and developing diverse talent for SIOP’s next generation of volunteer leadership.

DuVernet currently works as director of Training and Development at Training Industry. In this role, she oversees all processes related to the development, delivery, and evaluation of Training Industry’s learning and development (L&D) programs. Her specific focus is on the professional development that L&D practitioners need in their careers, such as certification, training, networking. She feels that this experience directly relates to the responsibilities of Professional Practice officer and will provide valuable perspective to this position.

DuVernet’s candidate statement specified three goals for SIOP: (1) foster and strengthen community; (2) provide tangible resources, job aids, and professional development; and (3) bridge science and practice gaps across relevant fields. She set these goals based on responses from membership surveys, which clearly outline needs for early-, mid-, and late-career professionals. Read her full statement on the SIOP Candidates page.

About the SIOP Voting Process

Each person elected must receive a majority of votes cast for that position. After each voting round, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. If the voter's first choice receives the lowest number of votes, the vote is transferred to their second choice for the second round and so on until one candidate reaches the required quota.

SIOP values elections that are open and fair, values that reflect and amplify the positive culture of the profession. See the voting results here.