A
multicultural, multi-specialised team
Contents
A
multicultural, multi-specialised team
Contents
They work for ICOM every day and for most members they are known as "Paris".
This is because the Secretariat is in Paris, but also because not many
members know the names or have seen the faces of ICOM's employees. These
two pages will show you who they are and what they look like: the people
who send you your membership card, who make ICOM News or organise a meeting
on Illicit Traffic or Cultural Tourism. All of them live in Paris, but
most of them are not originally from Paris or even from France. The members
of the team reflect various regions and cultures. Most of them speak more
than two languages. They all have specialised training and education,
but assist each other where necessary. They are all optimistic about the
organisation's positive development and focused on the future. Most of
the time they meet you by Email or telephone. Here are the faces behind
the wires.
Secretary General
The Secretary General has two main tasks: managing the Secretariat and
representing ICOM. The operations of the Secretariat are important for
the effective and efficient administration of ICOM. More and more work
is focused on the use of electronic communications, not always easy in
an organisation where a big gap still exists between the computer haves
and have-nots. The Secretary General represents ICOM at important meetings
through speeches or written contributions. He is also responsible for
fund-raising activities. Manus comes from the Netherlands, where he managed
the Museums Association, a background which helps in the promotion of
efforts to bring ICOM and Museums Associations closer together.
Membership Unit Eloïsa
Zell Tito
Chan
Marina Laraoui The members of ICOM are its cornerstone. Eloïsa is the Membership
Unit Officer and she is helped by Tito. Both of them are Filipino. Together
they are responsible for everything to do with the management of the Organisation's
16,000 members. On a daily basis their work consists in recruiting members,
seeing to the administrative follow-up for membership, replying to a thousand
and one questions, collecting dues, and checking and updating data. The
Unit also takes care of distributing publications, statistics and membership
lists to the Committees and to the other Units in the Secretariat. Eloïsa
deals more particularly with support for new Committees, benefits for
members, and the management of the financial side, which she does with
Sylvie from the Accounts Unit. Thomas Jandia and Marina Larioui also work
part-time in the Unit. The Membership Unit is in constant contact with
the Programme Activities Unit and the Communications and Publications
Unit so as to ensure that the support given to members is coherent.
Programme Activities Unit Jennifer and Cristina are products
of the specialised Ecole du Louvre and Ecole nationale du patrimoine Institutes
in Paris. Jennifer, who is American, is the Unit's Officer, while Cristina
recently arrived from her native Italy to take up the post of Programme
Specialist. Together they organise the ICOM international meetings and
activities in accordance with the guidelines sketched out in the Triennial
Programme. The Unit consults with the National and International Committees
and the Affiliated and Regional Organisations in order to involve as many
museum professionals as is feasible in its strategic and capacity-building
activities. These activities come in different formats (workshops, conferences,
courses) and are organised in different
geographical areas and across a variety of museum domains. Everything
from the design of the project, the choice of key themes and participants
to providing advance documentation and even booking hotels comes under
the aegis of this Unit, as well as preparation of fund-raising documents,
since these activities are not covered in ICOM's regular budget. The Unit
is always stretched somewhere between the follow-up of one activity and
the launching of the next!
Communications and Publications Unit Valérie
Jullien Saskia
Brown Carla
Bonomi This Unit covers Press, Public Relations and Publications activities.
Valérie, who comes from the South of France, is the Unit's Officer
and concentrates on Press and Public Relations, organising ICOM's campaigns
and working closely with the Programme Activities and Membership Unit
to promote the work of ICOM. Familiar with the Internet, Valérie
has been working with Cary Karp in the development of the ICOM Web site
over the past few years and supporting ICOM's growing electronic infrastructure.
Her particular field of activity is the fight against the illicit traffic
in cultural property, and for this she is in regular contact with journalists,
customs officials and INTERPOL. Saskia, British of Czech origin, assists
Valérie and is in charge of editorial work, especially the ICOM
News and Study Series regular publications. In this context she carries
out research, writes, works with authors, solliciting articles and information,
and with translators and designers. She is also in charge of the distribution
of ICOM publications. Carla, from Italy, who recently joined the Unit,
is the Internet Content Editor. She is working on redesigning and reorganizing
our Web site.
UNESCO-ICOM Information Centre Elisabeth, the only real Parisian in the team, is also the only Information
Officer working in the Information Centre. She helps visitors who come
to the Centre and replies to the many questions on a wide variety of subjects
that she receives by telephone, letter and Email. In connection with this,
she would like to remind people that the Centre does not have a database
containing statistics on museum visitors! The Information Centre asks
the Committees, Regional Organisations and Affiliated International Organisations
to systematically send Elisabeth their publications so that she can catalogue
and index them (apart from ICOM publications, the Centre only keeps particular
documents that deal with questions on which ICOM focuses specifically).
Through her role as a researcher and given her great experience of ICOM,
Elisabeth is the living memory of the Organisation. If you have a question
on a meeting, on minutes, reports or a specialised work, Elisabeth will
certainly have the answer or be able to refer you to other services or
sources of information on museology and museography.
Administration Unit The Administration Unit manages the entire administrative side of ICOM.
Joëlle, who comes from the French West Indies, is the Administrative
Officer, and she is helped by Thomas, from Normandy in the northwest of
France. The Unit is mainly responsible for organising the meetings of
the Executive Council, the Advisory Committee and the General Conference,
preparing and distributing working documents and writing up and sending
out the minutes of the meetings. Joëlle therefore works in close
collaboration with the Organising Committee for the General Conference
and is always in direct contact with each member of the Executive Council.
Thomas takes care of some of Manus Brinkman's secretarial work and also
works part-time for the Membership Unit, which helps the circulation of
information between the two Units and enables close collaboration in several
domains. A third person takes care of the switchboard and the mail and
also lends the various Units a helping hand depending on their administrative
needs.
Accounts Unit Sylvie, who is French of Indian origin, takes care of everything to do
with ICOM in the domain of accounting. She carries out regular checks
on the accounts - completed by those of the chartered accountant and the
auditor - draws up budget estimates and reports, and replies to questions
on matters relating to tax and the workplace. The international nature
of ICOM naturally means that she juggles with dozens of different currencies
every day. Her work aims overall to ensure that the laws governing tax
and labour are respected. And so she has the heavy and thankless task
of demanding justification for every expense covered by ICOM. This is
to ensure that ICOM upholds sound accounting practices, which are vital
if we are to benefit from the continued confidence of our members and
funding organisations.
Article published on "ICOM News", vol.53, 2000
N°4
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