Thanks, Chuck!

Anybody who's worked closely with me, heck, every single person who has worked at CTI , has heard me say we need "The right people, in the right places, doing the right things at the right time and doing it right." That 'right person' can significantly impact an AV project or business. In the case of Chuck Wilson and the NSCA , we're talking about an entire industry.

Chuck announced his retirement as the CEO of the National Systems Contractors Association at the Business & Leadership Conference (BLC) 2024, though the transition began years before. That's typical for Chuck. He turned his retirement into a high-profile exercise in an orderly, well-thought-out succession, something our industry is notoriously bad at.

Chuck has spent the last 28 years helping our industry get over a list of things commercial integrators are notoriously bad at. He taught hundreds of integrators nationwide to think of ourselves as an industry and work together, especially on legislation that impacts us locally and nationwide. He launched the NSCA Education Foundation to provide scholarships and develop curriculum, internships, and fund research to keep advancing the industry and IGNITE to help us find the next generation of workers.

In one of the greatest understatements of all time, Chuck observed, "Many integration firms are still unrefined in their talent management practices." The BLC exists to counteract that. And, most importantly, to help us -keep- talented people in AV and systems integration.

Chuck has created a culture of giving back that would be hard to find the equal of in any other industry.

Many people would have shaken their heads at the conditions he found around a school in Chicago. Chuck called the folks at the Security Industry Association (SIA) , and together, they created Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) . Pass offers, free of charge, a set of nationwide best practices and actions for securing K-12 facilities, including multiple security options based on available resources and "How to distinguish needed and effective solutions from sales pitches on unnecessary products."

What's crazy is that Chuck's 28 years with the NSCA represent his - second - career. (Or, if you prefer, the NSCA is his second employer!) He became the NSCA's first full-time employee in 1996 after helping found the group in 1982 and serving on the Board of Directors from 1988 to 1995. As he told rAVe [PUBS] in an interview, "A few issues quickly surfaced: NSCA was nearly broke and no member database. (And I, of course, had no idea how to run a trade association.)"

Given where the NSCA is today, he had some excellent ideas about what the integration industry needed. I suspect most of these were gathered during his first career, which started in the late seventies at Communications Engineering Company (CEC) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he worked as a college intern. After graduating, he became a full-time CEC employee, moving from installation to design, sales, and management, then a full partner. CEC grew to a half dozen offices and was sold to another integrator in 1996.

As an industry, we're incredibly fortunate that Chuck decided to take the reins at the NSCA instead of moving on to another integration company that year. I've mentioned the state the organization was in when he started. If you've worked in integration, you know the intensity of the personalities the man was working to band together.

However effortless Chuck might have made it look, it couldn't have been that easy, especially given the level of service the NSCA has brought to its members in the nearly three decades since. Thomas LeBlanc , formerly the Editorial Director of Commercial Integrator , took over Chuck's position as Executive Director in 2021 and will guide the organization moving forward. While technically he's retiring, Chuck says he'll continue to work on the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS), along with helping the NSCA find and grow the next generation of AV professionals.

The man keeps on giving. On behalf of myself and the entire CTI family, I want to call out everything Chuck Wilson has done for the AV industry in an extraordinary second career. We're much better for it.

Thank you.