Betty Baxter: Board Relationships

Board member, Betty Baxter, is interviewed at Celebration Centre about board relationships and gays and lesbians working together.

Baxter: “In terms of working with men in that kind of long-term and sometimes intense relationship there, I think, have been real growth experiences for both women and men on the Board. There’s been times when I think the women have done a tremendous amount of educating of gay men around especially economic issues, political issues. There’s been a clear mandate for this Board that we are not a political organization, that our mandate is to host these games and that’s all, however, there’s been lots of peripheral education and my personal belief is that the Games are of tremendous political import to Vancouver and to those of us who live in Vancouver.

As Board members we don’t often agree, there’s lots of times when we’re having very, very, vigorous discussion about some issues. There’s times when we have abstentions on certain motions or some people consistently opposed to certain motions but by and large I feel like the experience has been a positive one and I would be ready to publicly defend how we have handled ourselves in terms of an organization and as leaders of an organization.”