Tom Luhnow’s sudden and heretofore unexplained departure from the Greater San Diego Business Association (GSDBA) late last summer caused a great deal of head scratching.
As promised in the first part of our look into the events that led up to a surprising parting of the ways between the former CEO and one of this region’s largest and most influential business organizations – LGBT or otherwise – San Diego LGBT Weekly has put together the following timeline:
December 2012: Eric Brown rejoins GSDBA board, now as chair after less than six months away. Brown had served on the board for six years previously.
Early May 2013: First stirrings of dissatisfaction about Tom Luhnow’s leadership emerge, as evidenced by Brown’s expressions, during board and committee meetings, of concern about what he describes as Luhnow’s late planning for events and the organization being “behind schedule” on educational and other programs.
Late May: Brown, board present less-than-stellar, yet not unsatisfactory review of Luhnow’s performance as CEO in 2012.
Early June: Brown, executive committee develop “CEO Professional Development Plan,” ostensibly designed to guide Luhnow toward better alignment with board’s goals.
Mid-June: Luhnow given 10 days to review and agree to what one board member calls the “Sisyphussian task” of fulfilling the requirements of the CEO Professional Development Plan. (As Wikipedia notes, in Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who was “… punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever.”)
Late June: Sue Sneeringer, whose job has been described by former staff members as both administrative assistant and operations manager, resigns unexpectedly after a one-on-one meeting with Eric Brown (anecdotally, Sneeringer returns to GSDBA a few weeks after Luhnow’s departure).
July 16: GSDBA’s legal counsel, Paul Cataudella and vice chair, Jeri Muse Ph.D. inform Tom Luhnow that the board has decided to “go in a different direction.” He is asked to resign. Having already removed his personal affects from the premises prior to that meeting, Luhnow hands over his keys to the office.
Late July: After keeping the board waiting more than a week, Luhnow finally submits his formal resignation. Said a source close to the issue who asked to remain anonymous for legal reasons, “people were sweating bullets” until Luhnow submitted his signed general release and resignation.
July 29: U-T San Diego business reporter, Katherine Poythress writes that GSBDA’s chair, Eric Brown couldn’t comment about Tom Luhnow’s recent resignation and could only say, that the board “… came up with some new strategies it wanted to implement…” and that he wanted “… to honor (Luhnow’s) efforts on a chamber that really got focused under his direction.”
Publicly, few if any have argued that Luhnow did anything but improve GSDBA during his tenure. Luhnow said he was legally obliged not to comment about why he thinks he was asked to resign. He also said he could not comment on this timeline or LGBT Weekly’s previous news article about his departure from the organization.
Yet, the fact that Luhnow only had to hand over his keys during his final meeting with Vice Chair Jeri Muse and GSDBA’s attorney, having nothing left in his office to remove after being asked to resign, would seem to indicate that he was not surprised by the move. This was hardly a case of a surprise knife in the back à la Brutus and Caesar, despite the popular analogy of was Tom Luhnow asking Eric Brown to return to GSDBA.
GSDBA Chairman Eric Brown said he found LGBT Weekly’s reporting in last issue’s special report about Luhnow’s departure as CEO to be fair, with one caveat: He does not believe there was a newsworthy story to tell in the first place.
“However, I appreciated that you included my comments about the lack of fairness in the statement that ‘I’m a bull in a china shop,’” Brown said, adding figuratively. “I’ve never broken any china. I’m gay; I like nice things.”
Further waxing philosophically, albeit with a little less tongue in cheek, Brown protested LGBT Weekly’s anonymous source’s contention that he, Brown, acts strictly out of a love for political strategy.
“If looking out for the needs of the LGBT community is political, then I guess I’m political,” he said. “But that’s not the definition of politics I’m familiar with.”
Brown also criticized the person who formerly sat on the GSDBA board of directors, who spoke anonymously to this publication for not “having the (expletive deleted) to speak on the record.”
LGBT Weekly provided Eric Brown with the timeline researched for this story. Brown told LGBT Weekly that the timeline was not accurate but failed to specify exactly how and where.
