Running the IPA has become a complex task, requiring many skills not needed before the recent legal, financial, and governance reorganization. Two IPA corporations in the United States and two in the United Kingdom were initiated through expensive legal and financial consultations; now such matters will be handled chiefly by Piers Pendred, who has taken up the post of IPA director general in Broomhills as of January 1, 2000.

Pendred, a graduate of Cambridge University, has spent the past twenty-four years as a senior executive with the British Council. His posts with this large global non-profit organization have steadily increased in responsibility from director of publishing to director of public relations, member of the management board, director of finance, assistant director general, and finally director of educational enterprises. He was selected from more than thirty applicants in a process lasting four months. The final selection interviews were conducted by the IPA's Executive Committee together with Robert Michels and Peter Fonagy, and with Vanessa Cameron, executive director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

In addition to the responsibilities in the IPA already mentioned, Pendred's duties will comprise strategic planning, including annual business plans and development of membership services; financial management oversight; administrative leadership with enhanced support of IPA activities; organizational development; and conference organization, including newly efficient management of the PA biennial international congresses.

We anticipate that IPA members will be better served and IPA officers freed from administrative details so that they can focus on matters of psychoanalytic importance in today's environment. We welcome Pendred to the IPA and look forward to an invigorated administrative support for our endeavors in support of psychoanalysis.