John O’Toole: Your year as Chair of the AANS/CNS Section on Disorders of the Spine and Peripheral Nerves was marked by a number of exciting changes and daunting challenges. What would you say you were most proud of and most challenged by during that year?

John Hurlbert: As a Spine Section I think this past year provided two major challenges, one professional and one personal. Our profes- sional challenge was not unexpected and relates to our annual meeting. The political and economic landscape of Spine Surgery is changing now more than ever. Keeping the Spine Section not only viable but vital means that we have to adapt to these changes. Finding the right recipe towards which to allocate our energies and resources has become a very fluid endeavor. We benchmark our impact and our success from membership attendance and industry participation at our annual general meeting. We continue to meet our target in these respects but it gets harder every year. We may end up having to change not only what we do, but how we measure it.

This year brought a challenge of a very personal nature to the Spine Section. As a cataclysmic example of how ground zero can change suddenly and permanently we lost one of our biggest assets, Dr. Charles Kuntz III. One day he was with us and the next he wasn’t. It was way more than just about losing our astute and insightful treas- urer. Over the past decade Charlie had become a highly respected voice on the Executive Committee, known for both his patience and his wisdom. When Charlie spoke everyone listened; what he said often changed the way we thought. He represented a tangible piece of the future for our Spine Section. The void he has left behind will be felt for many years to come. We miss you Charlie.

We were able to accomplish some important behind-the-scenes pieces that I hope will serve the Section well into the future. As the Spine Section’s mandate and activities have grown, it has become an increas- ingly difficult task to coordinate the efforts of those involved. We attacked this issue from two directions. First we tightened up the Executive Committee structure and function by revising our Rules and Regulations to better reflect operational efficiencies that had naturally evolved over the years. Second we re-incarnated a document used nearly a decade ago to track individual activities on the executive committee affectionately termed the“Grid”. It’s basically a spreadsheet that displays officers and committee members in a top-down matrix over time providing an opportunity to recognize people’s strengths and skillsets, allow them to grow, and to secure the lineage of the Spine Section. From the hard work of a few key individuals this new grid not only allows us to define the next decade of the Section but it also provides a permanent record of our history.

Beyond a doubt John, I am most proud simply about having had the honor to serve as Chairperson for a year. I think it’s probably much like commanding an aircraft carrier; there’s a lot of traffic coming and going but the course is set and most of it is already taken care of by the people working for you. They know their jobs and they do them well. In my opinion the privilege is more about the posting rather than any individual or their actions.