Members elect Amy Fischbach as president, Erin Erickson as vice president, and Tina Grady Barbaccia as treasurer.
Aug. 15, 2011 — The American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) members have elected a new slate of officers for a two-year term. At the conclusion of the ASBPE national editorial conference in Chicago on Aug. 5, ASBPE named Amy Florence Fischbach as the president, Erin Erickson as the vice president, and Tina Grady Barbaccia as the secretary/treasurer.
Fischbach is a contributing editor for Transmission and Distribution World magazine and manages an award-winning monthly section called “Electric Utility Operations.” She worked for Primedia Business Magazines and Media (now Penton) for eight years, most recently as the managing editor of Club Industry magazine. She also worked as a staff writer for Electrical Construction and Maintenance magazine and CEE News. For the last four-and-a-half years, she has worked as a freelance writer and editor specializing in the B2B industry. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Kansas State University, and she studied abroad at the University of Sunderland in England. She joined ASBPE in 2002, when she was named a Young Leader Scholar. She then helped to start the Kansas City chapter of ASBPE and served as the vice president and president of the chapter. Fischbach then went on to serve a term as the national vice president of ASBPE.
During her two-year term as president of ASBPE, Fischbach plans on focusing on three key areas: increasing membership, developing a strategic marketing and communications plan, and offering valuable educational sessions for B2B professionals nationwide.
“This is a challenging, yet exciting, time for the B2B industry,” Fischbach said. “I am looking forward to recruiting new members, growing the organization, and embracing new opportunities for professional development.”
Fischbach is also planning to continue immediate past president Warren Hersch’s initiative to get more members involved at the national level. ASBPE is now recruiting volunteers for the following committees: governance, communications, program/education, strategic planning, competition, membership, nomination, finance, research, and ethics. She urges ASBPE members to download a Willingness to Serve form (37K Word doc).
“We encourage our members to get involved in helping us to shape the future of ASBPE,” she said.v
Erickson, the new vice president for ASBPE, recently chaired the conference committee for the national editorial conference Aug. 4-5 in downtown Chicago. She joined Putman Media in March of 2008. Erickson is responsible for posting all of the content as well as managing all of the social media applications for FoodProcessing.com. Prior to joining Putman Media, Erickson was the managing editor for a large B2B publisher. In addition to her work at Putman Media and on ASBPE’s national board, she is also a technical consultant for several online social networking ventures.
The new national secretary/treasurer, Tina Grady Barbaccia, is the executive editor of Randall-Reilly Publishing Co.’s Better Roads magazine and news/digital editor for Aggregates Manager magazine. Prior to joining her current company, in her professional career she has worked on publications including the following: Automotive Body Repair News (ABRN), Automotive Marketing, Appliance, Farm Chemicals and Farm Chemicals International, the Columbus Dispatch, the Record-Courier, The Gateway News and the Aurora Advocate. She has also contributed to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Homestyles magazine, World Highways and other publications.
Barbaccia has bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication and in theater studies from Kent State University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Communication managerial program. She served as the president of the Chicago ASBPE chapter and just finished a term as the national vice president of ASBPE.
Like Fischbach, Barbaccia plans to focus on making ASBPE more valuable to its members and providing educational opportunities and training, with a particular focus on best practices in the current multimedia environment.
“In the current environment of ‘mobile journalism’ and the continued integration of print and digital media, it’s important to ensure our members understand the best practices and ethics of the merging mediums and the fuzzy line that has been created as we function as both journalists and marketers for our respective brands,” Barbaccia said. “I’m looking forward to a second term as a national officer to help move the organization forward and promote excellence in the business press.”