Board of Directors

To learn more about the role of the Board of Directors at Resonate, including election or removal processes, check out clauses 36-40 in the Rulebook.

Board Committees

Board Roles

  • The Board or Board of Directors
  • Director
  • Chairperson
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer

The Board or The Board of Directors is used when referring to the collective rights, responsibilities, or actions of the members of the Board. The Board can act collectively only through board motions.

Director or Directors is used when referring to the individual rights, responsibilities, or actions of a member of the Board.

The Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer each have individual rights and responsibilities. They are elected by the Board.

The Board

Rights

  • tbd

Responsibilities

  • At each board meeting, to vote on the publishing of the minutes of the previous board meeting
  • At each board meeting, to vote on the publishing of at least one additional unreviewed minutes – so that we will make regular progress on our backlog of unreviewed minutes

Directors

@directors

Rights

  • tbd

Responsibilities

  • to review meeting minutes in advance of the board meeting during which they will be approved
  • to share any proposed amendments to the minutes during their time of review. The exact text of an proposed amendment must be posted in the forum Boardroom before a board meeting.

Chairperson

@richjensen since January 2022

Rights

  • tbd

Responsibilities

  • to ensure that the Board completes the collective responsibilities in their role description
  • to ensure that the Board can exercise the collective rights in their role description
  • to ensure that the Board or Executive implement all resolutions passed by Co-op Members
  • to keep Co-op Members informed of progress toward implementation of their passed resolutions

Secretary

@sganesh since January 2022

Rights

  • to accept or refuse any proposed amendments to the minutes which are being reviewed
  • to publish any previously approved board meeting minutes which have not been yet published

Responsibilities

  • to update board roles’ rights and responsibilities when amended by the Board. The Secretary will update the corresponding descriptions in the Roles category of the Handbook.
  • To update the forum titles of all forum users with Board and Executive roles, either by adding a user to the forum usergroup which assigns them their title (e.g. “The Board”), or by editing their individual title (e.g. “Treasurer”) when a usergroup is not relevant. To fulfill this responsibility, the Secretary will have an Admin role in the forum. In the absence of a Secretary, the Chairperson will direct a forum Admin to update these titles.
  • to prepare the minutes for review
  • to make these minutes available for review by Directors no later than one week prior to a Board Meeting
  • to publish approved minutes no later than one week after approval
  • to notify co-op members that minutes have been published

Treasurer

There is currently no Treasurer.

Rights

  • tbd

Responsibilities

  • tbd

Current Directors

Sunita Ganesh @sganesh

Melissa Taylor @melis_tailored

Melissa Taylor has worked in the independent electronic music scene since 1999 - in public relations, as a freelance journalist, for nightclubs, in artist management, running labels, consultant, as an occasional artist, and raver.

She is the founder and head publicist of the independent music communication agency, Tailored Communication, based in Berlin. Tailored has been at the forefront of electronic music and nightlife culture for 17 years focused on supporting independent artists and labels.

She is committed to the launch of an anti-capitalist collective patronage platform for independent music called ERIS - which aligns strongly with the Resonate goal of digital dignity. Community Credentials offers a new road-map for how ERIS can rise and serve the artistic community.

Melissa joined Resonate coop as a volunteer in 2020, committed to bringing more artists and labels onto Resonate, to help build the alternative music economy and educate artists about their choices, value and benefits of supporting anti-capitalist platforms and coops. She joined the board in January 2021 and is currently taking on the position of Editorial Director.

Melissa is a mother of two bi-lingual children and writes for her own entertainment.

Z @zetto.plus

Z is a music and visual artist with bases in NYC and Tokyo, and co-founder of Black Socialists in America (BSA), a revolutionary education and tech-focused organization that has received praise from ex-Panthers like Kent Ford, world-renowned thinkers like Noam Chomsky, and many others. After studying in NYC and Sophia University (上智大学) in Tokyo, Japan, Z struggled as a Sales Associate at Opening Ceremony, focusing on his own music and visuals in his spare time, and working on music videos for artists like A$AP Rocky, Future, The Weeknd, and others as both a PA and treatment writer. While in Japan teaching English in early 2017, Z decided to pursue full-time creative work back in the United States. In December of 2017, Z started the BSA social media platform, which garnered a following of over 10,000 people in just six weeks, and became the foundation for the organization founded in April of 2018.

Rich Jensen @richjensen

An early collaborator with the independent K and Sub Pop cassette-based music labels in Olympia, Washington USA in the 1980s, Rich later built the business infrastructure for Sub Pop in Seattle, establishing its rise as a showcase for many artists to follow. With Chris Takino in 1993, Rich co-founded Up Records, associated with breakthrough work of artists such as Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, The Pastels, Quasi, and Duster. That year he also launched Sub Pop Advanced Media (SPAM), leading that label in early 1994 to obtain one of the earliest music URLs. In 2009, comrades in the band YACHT released a version of his 1987 song ‘Psychic City’ to modest commercial success. In 2014, Rich joined forces with Brodie Stevens to form Cabin Games, a Native American-owned music and management company. Currently based in Seattle, Rich is pleased to bring his experience supporting diverse emerging artists and peer-to-peer cultural forms to the urgent work to cultivate music-based interdependence through cooperative community-owned networks like Resonate. ~ Credo: Make music not war.

Nati Linares @nati

Nati grew up on the island of Shaolin, also known as Staten Island, New York City — close to both the world’s largest garbage dump and the oldest continuously inhabited free Black community in the United States. She’s the child of Cuban and Colombian immigrants who landed in Queens in the late 1960s, benefited from low-cost public college and raised her with a love of learning, exploration and music. As a mami, she strives to raise a son who can resist the patriarchy to become a full human being and embrace life’s contradictions. She comes to the solidarity economy movement after a decade witnessing inequities in the music and media industry while working with diasporadical and misrepresented artists. Nati tells the stories of people resisting Capitalism and building new systems, especially those creating a culture of revolution.

Greg Heuss @greg

Greg is a co-founder and the Managing Partner at Reflective Venture Partners. Prior to creating Reflective Ventures he co-led the successful private token sale of RChain Co-op. Greg has been involved with technology companies for over 20 years and has helped build some of the largest brands in the world. He was an early pioneer with Amazon where he led the sales and marketing efforts of new product, brand and special events.

Greg went on to help create one of the first online dating sites; Kiss.com which he sold to Match.com. He later helped build and direct multiple companies to a point of merger, sale and/or public offering. He has a deep background and understanding of the music industry having spent multiple years promoting major music tours. Some of his recent successes have come from specializing in the structure, go-to-market and fund raising efforts within the blockchain community. Greg holds a degree in Business and Marketing from Washington State University.

Peter Harris @peter

Active as a web developer since the 90s, Peter has built hundreds of sites across dozens of industries. He has focused especially on the music industry, collaborating with numerous musicians, from struggling artists to mid-level bands (and even a few platinum-selling superstars). Working by day as a web dev, Peter had a night hobby as a DJ and electronica producer. This led to experiments with virtually every web and music publishing platform available. Exploring all of their weaknesses and strengths, this combination of background and insight eventually birthed Resonate’s fundamental features. He has spoken at the following festivals and conferences about Resonate and the blockchain: re:publica, Sonar+D, Reeperbahn, Music Tech Fest, Elevate, Most Wanted Music, Reworks, Supermarkt, Platform Cooperativism, Pop Kultur and From Me 2 U.

Past Directors

Kalam Ali

Terry Tyldesley

Nick Meyne

Stephanie Merchak

Mat Dryhurst

Soenke Zehle

Sam Toland

Hakanto @hakanto

5 Likes

The Board has begun a process of clarifying the rights and responsibilities of the Board and its roles. Above has been updated following two motions passed on July 23, 2022.

2 Likes

Someone has changed the descriptor for the Forum account I use.

I had identified the role I serve as ‘board (chair)’ and it has been changed by an Admin to ‘Chairperson’.

I think of a Member in these spaces seeing the word ‘Chairperson’ without indication that this is a role confined to the Board. I believe this sets up a misleading relation.

In my reading of the rules, Resonate does not have a Chair or Chairperson.

Instead, Resonate has a Board. The Resonate Board selects its officers. In January I said that I was willing to serve as its Chair until the Board sought someone else to serve.

I’m taking a moment to share my reading of these relations because I think first impressions are important. For that reason, I chose to indicate the role I serve for the co-op in the way that I did. It is important for Members in these spaces to know who is serving what roles, just as it is important for Members to know how to determine the rules of service.

1 Like

I do think you’re right that it may be unclear to folks how these officer roles relate to the board if all folks see is “secretary” or “chairperson”. Perhaps we could do “director, chairperson” or similiar?

I made the change to your user role here in the forum after the recent board motion which reaffirmed the names of the roles as they appear in the rulebook.

Rulebook Section 37.i

37.i. The Board shall elect a Chairperson, Treasurer and Secretary from among their number at the first Board Meeting after each AGM, and may fill all casual vacancies as they arise.

I suggest:

Board Member
Board Chair
Board Secretary
Board Treasurer

The context of rule 37.i and the roles it describes are internal to the Board not the whole body of the co-op.

This discussion also raises the issue of what is the appropriate venue and process for addressing questions and determining actions of this nature.

The board passed a motion about this, so you should raise your suggestion to them. I was simply implementing the board’s decision on y’all’s behalf after offering to help.

I’m unclear about a point though, it the role of “Chair” (and the other roles described about) is just about being “chair of the board”, then there’s no chairperson for Resonate, no Secretary for Resonate, no Treasurer for Resonate etc. ? I fail to understand how the board members roles can “only be confined” or are “only internal” to the Board, isn’t the whole point of the board to define those roles in the co-op? The role of the Board is to represent the coop so what can a role “just about the board and not the coop” be?

1 Like

Yeah I agree @LLK

While such roles are appointed by the board (although in phase 2 of governance the “Cooperative Chairperson” is selected by co-op members from among the directors), these roles’ actions directly impact the whole co-op, not solely the board.

The treasurer doesn’t maintain the board’s treasury, they maintain the co-op’s treasury. The secretary doesn’t maintain the board’s bylaws and minutes, they maintain the co-op’s bylaws and minutes (which includes the board’s meetings).

These roles should be accountable to all members and however we title them should make that clear.

I think this is a great discussion by the way since the whole point of this topic is to clarify for every member on the forum what the roles of the Board Members are. So in this instance particularly, we could function by the negative : What is it in being Resonate’s Chairperson @richjensen that you feel you’d have to do as extra/differently vs just being the Board’s Chair that you don’t feel like you signed up to do? What kind of tasks typically?

To me this is about accurately defining the relation between the person serving as a Board Officer and how they might be encountered in the social context of the forum.

To people just dropping in to these spaces, I believe it may be confusing to see that someone is identified as ‘executive’ and someone else is identified as ‘chairperson’. The co-op executive (team or individual) represents operational authority. The chair is one member of a policy setting committee of nine individuals who require assembly as a quorum to make a decision.

I believe referencing the Chair’s status as a member of the Board, rather than as an individual authority (Chairman Mao?) provides a more accurate representation of the relation or context for fellowship with other members in these public spaces.

On this basis I had set my role descriptor to ‘board (chair)’ (following the decapitalization convention I have seen brandon practice) until it was revised by a Forum admin based on their reading of the motion passed by the Board June 23.

I see on review that there was specific language in the motion regulating the descriptors.

I respect that I should have caught that earlier and apologize for taking up anyone’s time with being a cranky old stinker.

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