Nathan and I thought we would start with our own separate posts to introduce ourselves before getting into an introduction of our vision for the next term.

I think pretty much all of you know me in STF and at least know my more recent experience and roles in STF, so I’ll leave some of those highlights for the end of this post. I think, instead, I wanted to start with introducing you all to some stuff about me in RL and how that plays into why I’m interested in being President.

Outside of my RL work, a lot of my time is spent in my volunteer roles. I’m on the board for two not-for-profit organizations, the executive for a professional association, and I’m the advisor for the Board of a third not-for-profit organization. For me, this type of work is fun and rewarding! For my main not-for-profit organization - which is a fairly large not-for-profit organization in Southern Ontario, Canada, I am in my sixth year on the 14-member Board of Directors, and in my third year as Chair of that Board. My volunteer work - which I love - is to coordinate decisions, make executive decisions as needed, interpret the organization’s policies and governing legislation to ensure the actual organization is doing the best job to meet its goals and purpose, building consensus from a large group of different voices, making tough decisions when no consensus can be met, providing leadership and governance to the organization, and provide support to the managers and administrative directors that report back to me.

My other RL work is my actual job (which most of you know about). When I joined STF I was still in law school, and now I’m still in STF but I’m a 13-year call lawyer. I’m actually a criminal lawyer and former Assistant Crown Attorney in the Greater Toronto Area. A lot of my work involves reading documents, messages, and legislation, making interpretations, explaining my reasoning, and trying to resolve some really tough issues and disputes. Unlike television criminal lawyers, in real life we are really polite, collegial, don’t interrupt each other, (we are Canadian, after all!) and we love our legal ethics! :)

Of course, for a long time now, with one break I needed to focus on my early career, STF has been a big part of my life, and even when super frustrated, I have loved knowing that I can use my RL skills, knowledge and experience to keep this place running and ensure that after 30 years as a club we have another 30 years to look forward to! I’m almost at three consecutive years as the club’s Personnel Director. I was President during one of the club’s most important and major changes, and Vice-President (and later President) during another, earlier major change. In addition to being PDir and my two stints as Prez, I’ve been VP a couple of times, done a lot of work at various times in the PDept, and have held a handful of other cabinet positions and assistant cabinet positions I could review if anyone desperately wants me to. I have served a couple of times on EGO.

In addition to the Personnel Department, I have been very active in the Academy, and have really been proud of the work I have done there as an Academy DH, XO and CO.

If you have any other questions about my background and experience - RL or STF - feel free to ask.

Daniel Lerner

Daniel and Nathan: Working on a slogan since 2021