Dear friend,
I want you to hear this from me.
After more than twenty-six years leading TACA, I’m stepping into a new role inside the organization I helped build. Mike Le is now our Executive Director. I’m moving into a role called Director of Strategic Initiatives.
Two things brought this moment together. TACA has grown to a point where it needs dedicated executive leadership, someone whose entire job is running and growing the organization. And I have been appointed to the Federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, the IACC, the primary federal body advising on autism research, services, and policy. For years, I sat outside that committee as one of its loudest critics. Now I have a seat at that table, and I intend to use it.
For years, hundreds of parents have shown up to IACC meetings, testified, submitted comments, and shared the hardest parts of their lives in hopes that someone in Washington was listening. I am now the connection between what families are living in and what federal agencies decide. That work needs my attention. Mike gives me the room to do it.
Mike is an attorney, an MBA, and a proven nonprofit executive. He has spent his career building organizations that help more people effectively. He chose this mission because he believes in it. He is the right person.
Here’s what that means for you. Mike runs the organization: strategic plan execution, operations, with a key focus on national growth. My focus shifts to the work I’ve always loved most: being the national voice for TACA families, building partnerships that expand our reach, and making sure that wherever decisions about our kids are made, including in Washington, families have a seat at the table.
Here’s what doesn’t change. I’m not leaving. Our programs and services continue. The phone still gets picked up.
I started TACA in my living room, because my own family needed somewhere to turn. The thing I am proudest of is not that I built it. It’s that it grew bigger than me. That’s the point. That’s always been the point.
Thank you for trusting TACA with your family. I’m still right here.
With love,
Lisa Ackerman
Co-Founder, Board Member, and Director of Strategic Initiatives
