Trust The Process: How We Elected Lloyd Howell As Our New NFLPA Executive Director

July 12, 2023

This union relies on and is governed by player leadership. Now that our newly elected Executive Director, Lloyd Howell, has officially started, I want to share with our full membership why our Executive Committee and Board are not only excited for the future of our union, but are also proud of how we handled our business throughout the search process.

At the outset, we understood that trust among our player leaders was paramount, and we were determined to run a professional, confidential and thorough search that fostered trust among our player leaders and was free from outside influence. We set out to meet the best practices for an executive search in any industry and also meet the high standards our Board established at the start of the process. Our promises kept can and should serve as a blueprint for how player leaders can handle our business moving forward.

The goals we set and the Board resolutions that gave us our directives included:

• Providing updates to the Board on the search process at least once a month.
• Ensuring the process was led by player leadership, driven by player leadership and owned by player leadership.
• Ensuring the process was highly confidential, with all information coming directly from the search committee team.
• Interviewing the longest tenured reps to get an understanding of what we should be looking for before our outreach to any candidates started.
• Establishing an open process available for anyone to apply, while also directing our search firm to cast the widest possible net for qualified candidates.
• Keeping the process free from politicking, lobbying or influence from any of the candidates so that the focus remained on qualifications and experience.
• Establishing an understanding, acceptance and trust from the Board that they and we as the Executive Committee would each perform our respective roles, per our Constitution.

These were the priorities and directives we committed to. We are proud to have not only met every single one, but exceeded all of them, and below you can read exactly how we accomplished this. I cannot commend our player leadership enough for their efforts to stick to these directives. Our union is a far cry away from where we were coming out of the 2020 collective bargaining negotiations, and it is time for all of us as players to rally behind Lloyd as he takes the baton to lead our union into the future. Lloyd has already met with the Board and is looking forward to hitting the road soon to be in our locker rooms.

Here are more details on our process and how we kept our promises:

- Providing updates to the Board on the search process at least once a month.

- Ensuring the process was led by player leadership, driven by player leadership and owned by player leadership.

• The search committee ran the process from beginning to end, spending 570 hours of our time through organizing calls and meetings and conducting multiple rounds of interviews with multiple candidates. Staff, except for General Counsel Tom DePaso, were not involved in the process in any way, and Tom only served as a neutral counsel to the search committee to ensure our constitution and its laws were being followed.

- Ensuring the process was highly confidential, with all information coming directly from the search committee team.

• We wanted a search process that would be welcoming for A+ talent like Lloyd to enter. Individuals who were high profile or currently employed needed to be able to enter our process knowing they would be kept out of the public spotlight and would not be at risk of their current employer knowing they were potentially leaving. All members of our search committee signed confidentiality agreements and pledged not to discuss the search with anyone outside of executive sessions. When articles were written citing “sources close to the search,” we addressed it directly with the Board in executive sessions, explained why every story that was published missed the mark, and then continued on with our business.

- Interviewing the longest tenured reps to get an understanding of what we should be looking for before our outreach to any candidates started.

• We exceeded this promise by interviewing every single team’s Player Representative, along with all our Executive Committee, former players who served as Presidents and EC members, a wide range of the staff and even some external stakeholders. Only after we gathered that information did we put a job description together that was reviewed and discussed by the Board before it was posted.

- Establishing an open process available for anyone to apply, while also directing our search firm to cast the widest possible net for qualified candidates.

• Our players knew when the process opened and that anyone could apply by submitting an application via an email address that was available publicly. In fact, we encouraged players to consider individuals who could be interested and qualified to lead our union. The search committee reviewed each and every candidate no matter how they entered the process. We identified qualified candidates who could live up to the extensive job description developed and then put the most qualified candidates through a thorough vetting and interviewing process

- Keeping the process free from politicking, lobbying or influence from any of the candidates and instead focused on qualifications and experience.

• Unlike the open elections from the past, we were not going to allow for any candidate to turn this into a political campaign. Our organization is too powerful, prestigious and important to allow for public campaigning. We made it clear to all candidates that any attempt at influencing the process would not be tolerated as we were focused on qualifications, experience and leadership.

- Establishing an understanding, acceptance and trust from the Board that they and we as the Executive Committee would each perform our respective roles, per our Constitution.

• The Board authorized us to lead this process and in return, we pledged to them that they would have all the information they asked for when it came time to interview the finalists. We provided résumés, background checks, reference checks, psych assessments and highlights from the early rounds of interviews. We provided the Board with every opportunity to meet with the finalists in both small and large groups. We made it clear that we would not go to a vote until every Board member in attendance was comfortable and ready to vote.
• We also made it clear from the beginning that the Executive Committee’s job was to vet and qualify the candidates; but in the end, our Board had to make the final decision. The Executive Committee informed the Board early in the process that we would not give a recommendation or influence the vote. Our sole focus was finding qualified candidates and providing as much information as possible to make an informed decision about our future leader.

We are proud of the work we did that resulted in Lloyd Howell as our Executive Director, and now is the time for us to get to the important work of achieving those gains not yet attained.