3 days ago
Staffing changes made at Jefferson-Lewis, St. Lawrence Realtor boards
May 29—WATERTOWN — The Jefferson-Lewis Board of Realtors have made some major staff changes with the April retirement of longtime executive officer Lance Evans.
For almost 27 years, Evans handled the duties for the Jefferson-Lewis and St. Lawrence boards out of a Court Street office in Watertown.
But with Evans' retirement, the Jefferson-Lewis board is sharing services with the Ithaca Board of Relators and St. Lawrence has joined forces under a similar arrangement with the Adirondack Champlain Valley Realtors Board.
Jefferson-Lewis board president Karen Peebles noted that both her organization and the St. Lawrence board are small, so going with shared services made sense. It was also difficult to find an executive officer with the needed experience that Evans had for so many years, she said.
"I've been with the board for almost as long as Lance was," she said, adding that she joined a year after he started working for the organization.
He was hard to replace, she said.
The Jefferson-Lewis board will no longer have an executive officer working full time out of the Watertown office.
Instead, that board has arranged for contracted shared services for Sarah Wisdorf to work on the executive officer duties.
Wisdorf, the chief executive officer for the Ithaca board, will be working out of the Watertown location about three days a month and cover the responsibilities through Zoom meetings, telemessaging and other communication.
As CEO, she will oversee the daily operations of the Jefferson-Lewis board, focusing on financial and legal oversight, public relations and compliance. She will be responsible for executing the organization's strategic plan, ensuring the smooth functioning of the association, and fostering growth and development within the real estate industry in the region.
Meanwhile, the St. Lawrence board has contracted services for Mike Coughlin to work in the associated officer position, handling it on a part-time basis as he continues to head the Adirondack Champlain board as its CEO.
Jefferson-Lewis and St. Lawrence have their own governance boards. St. Lawrence closed its Canton office at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the past, the St. Lawrence board has worked with Coughlin in many capacities, so they knew him for a number of years, board president Tracy Bernard said.
"It's been an easy and seamless transition," Bernard said.
He works out of Adirondack Champlain's Plattsburgh office. Coughlin helped the Adirondack and Champlain valley boards to combine services a couple of years ago.
Wisdorf has been with Ithaca since 2022 and worked in Minnesota previously. She has worked in the real estate industry in senior management positions since 2003, with membership growth, staff management and community outreach experience. She's also a REALTOR Association certified executive and holds bachelor and master's degrees in business administration.
Her contract with Jefferson-Lewis extends to the end of the year.
The Jefferson-Lewis board will look at the arrangement in October and November "to see how it's going" to determine whether to continue with it, Peebles said.
Coughlin could not be reached for comment.
