The UniForum Association has new officers, two newly elected members of the board of directors, and two re-elected board members following the June membership election and the first meeting of the new board in July.
Michael Tilson, senior vice president of services for The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), was chosen by a unanimous vote of the board to succeed Dr. James Bell as president of UniForum. Dr. Bell, director of corporate alliances for Hewlett-Packard, decided to step down after two years as president. He remains on the board. Marie Burch, vice president of the Winta Group, was chosen by the board as executive vice president of UniForum for the coming year, succeeding Tilson in that position. Steve Zalewski, director of UNIX marketing for Oracle, was re-elected vice president of marketing of UniForum, and Randall Howard, president of Mortice Kern Systems, and a newly elected board member, as well as appointed by Tilson as UniForum's chief financial officer, succeeding Burch.
Howard and Jeanne Baccash, assistant vice president of enterprise network and system management with AT&T Global Information Solutions, were elected to the board in the June election, along with Bell and Roel Pieper, president and CEO of UB Networks, who were re-elected. All will serve two-year terms. Bell has served on the board since 1988 and Pieper since 1992. Baccash, Bell, Howard, and Pieper were elected from a slate of 10 candidates.
Tilson, 42, was elected to the board in 1991 and re-elected in 1993. "I think there are opportunities to build on what we do well and on our revitalized base of activities, such as the annual conference and trade show," Tilson said. "I want to use that as a springboard to re-launch UniForum as an organization with even larger impact on the open systems industry."
Tilson added, "There are great opportunities for UniForum in that we're evolving from a focus on only UNIX-based open systems to include additional open systems involving the Internet, the World-Wide Web and similar open technologies. It's an exciting time to assume the leadership of an exciting organization."