John B. "Jack" Cox announced his intention to retire as Executive Director of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), effective March 31, 2003. Cox has served in this role since September 1996.
"Jack Cox has transformed AAPS management to a professional level and his work will have a great impact on the future of the organization," stated Dr. Ho-Leung Fung, a past president of AAPS and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University at Buffalo, SUNY.
In his more than six years of service to the Association, Cox directed AAPS through a period of spectacular growth and innovation. During his tenure, AAPS' Annual Meeting attendance increased by 60 percent, from 5,000 to more than 8,000, while meeting exhibits jumped almost 150 percent, from 400 to near 950. Operating budgets also grew by 150 percent, from $4 million annually to $10 million. The Association's long-term investment reserves increased by almost 200 percent during these five years as well. Membership increased 60 percent, from less than 7,000 to 11,000. In one particularly productive period, AAPS introduced 48 new programs, products, benefits, or services for its members in 36 months, or one every three and half weeks.
Among several innovations during Cox's years at the Association, AAPS launched two peer-reviewed, electronic-only scientific journals; created and launched a highly successful news magazine; introduced the world's first Internet information portal in the pharmaceutical sciences, speeding critical and time-sensitive scientific information around the world in seconds; launched a heavily used online career center for pharmaceutical scientists; quadrupled professional development meetings and workshops; and created a book publishing program.
Cox has built his professional career managing not-for-profit organizations. His more than two decades in the field included stints with six national and international trade and professional associations.
Cox is involved in several association management organizations, and has served on the boards of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the Greater Washington Society of Association Executives. He is an ASAE Fellow, and has served on the Certified Association Executive Commission. He has written and taught extensively, and served as executive editor of Professional Practices in Association Management, one of the main reference books in the not-for-profit field; he also authored two of its chapters. In 2000, he was named "Association Executive of the Year" by Association Trends.
Asked to name his greatest challenge as well as accomplishment at AAPS, Cox said, "The overriding issue for any association chief staff executive today is the wealth of opportunities open for progressive associations, producing frequently competing demands for human and fiscal resources. I take the most pride in creating the highest quality and most productive staff in the association field. AAPS has a reputation among its peers and in the larger association community for having an extraordinary staff. Operating as a "committee of the whole" without departmental barriers, the staff has enabled AAPS to thrive with only two-thirds the number of employees that standard operating-ratio indices say we need in order to succeed."
The AAPS Executive Council has appointed a search committee to find a new Executive Director for the association.
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