Good-bye to Richard Gelula. Richard has stepped down as the CEO of the National Sleep Foundation, and has taken a position with Orr Associates. In his new job, Richard will still be doing what he does best: collaborating, cheerleading, and generally connecting the dots between people and organizations. When asked what he thought his biggest accomplishment at the NSF was, he said, “I feel that my greatest accomplishment was understanding that the key to achieving sleep awareness and advances in sleep policy and practice is collaboration. This is always an uphill battle because working in and seeing the world as silos seems to be based to a large extent on human nature; organizations resist collaboration. But practicing collaboration differentiated NSF from all other organizations in the sleep field, including NIH.” Indeed, under Richard’s leadership, the NSF partnered with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to create the National Sleep Awareness Roundtable (www.nsart.org) whose mission is 1) to raise awareness about; 2) to increase the understanding of; and 3) to reduce the public health and safety impact of sleep deprivation and sleep disorders by improving communication and collaboration among local, state and federal agencies; professional organizations; and the public. That’s a pretty tall order, and simply can’t be accomplished by a single entity. But Richard’s vision and persistence, coupled with the imagination and leadership of Dr Jim Walsh, set the wheels in motion to address these lofty, important goals.
Richard Gelula is also skilled at human resources. He has managed to recruit, educate, and retain a very talented and passionate crew at the NSF. Sometimes it is simply amazing how much this small but hard-working and gifted group is able to accomplish, including carrying out the Sleep in America poll, leadership dinner, and other activities of National Sleep Awareness Week, maintaining an incredibly active and up-to-date website, advocating for funding and public policy about sleep disorders and sleep awareness, and educating the public about sleep. That’s a LOT!
Richard brought a professionalism and passion to the field that will be missed. I, for one, will miss him.
