LITTLE ROCK — The Heifer Foundation board of trustees appointed Ardyth Neill as president of the organization after nearly nine months as interim president, a spokesman said Thursday.
The board made the decision by “unanimous consent” on May 11 after several months of discussion, said Shannon Boshears, a spokesman for the foundation.
“They just felt like she was fully capable of performing the duties as president, that she had been doing it, and they just felt that it was in the best intersts of the organization to leave it as it was — it seemed to work fine that way,” Boshears said.
The foundation, established in 1991, develops and manages endowments to support Little Rock-based Heifer International, whose primary mission is to provide livestock and agricultural training to end world hunger.
Neill joined the Heifer Foundation in 2001 after more than four years at Heifer International.
The foundation said in a statement Aug. 31, 2011, that Neill, who had previously served as the chief financial officer and vice president of asset management, had been appointed interim president and CEO.
The same statement noted that the previous president and CEO, Domingo Barrios, was “no longer with the Foundation.”
In a lawsuit filed July 25, 2011, in Pulaski County Circuit Court, Barrios alleged that four members of the foundation’s board had interfered with his employment contract with the foundation.
Barrios revealed in the lawsuit that he had been suspended from his position “in retaliation for reporting inappropriate conduct and unethical practices and procedures” and “violations of the established governance rules and regulation” of the foundation and Heifer International.
On Thursday, Boshears said Neill’s duties as president will be the same as those when she was interim. She said some of Neill’s old accounting and finance duties had been taken over by Jesse Schalk, who was hired as director of asset management earlier this year.
Arkansas, Pages 16 on 05/25/2012