Earlier this month, we announced that the CoCo was soliciting candidates for its fourth annual elections. Any CoCo member who resides in North America was eligible to be a candidate and run for election for the Board of Directors or Executive Director. This year, there are two open seats on the Board.

I’m pleased to present for your consideration the candidates who have offered their ideas, energy, and leadership to better our Scrabble community. Below are your 2023 leadership candidates.

Candidates for Board of Directors

Randi Goldberg

Hi, I'm Randi. Since I started playing Scrabble about a decade ago, I've really reveled in everything about it - the strategy, the studying, and most importantly, the people. The Scrabble community is full of great people, and it's really important to me that it continues to grow. I've worked in recruitment and event-running for years, and as a result have a lot of ideas for how to help the Scrabble community grow bigger and better.

Evans Clinchy

I've been a member of the CoCo board since its inception in 2020, and I would love the opportunity to continue for another two years.

Throughout my tenure, I've focused on doing everything I can to grow tournament Scrabble. Specifically, I've worked hard on player and director outreach (sorry, everyone, for the constant texts and emails pestering you to play and/or run tournaments) as well as content creation. I'm always on my grind, writing articles and social media posts and all sorts of stuff geared toward promoting our tournament scene.

Being a board member allows me to stay in touch with other CoCo leaders about our ideas for growing the game. We have a great team in place, and we've had a lot of productive sessions bouncing ideas off of one another and brainstorming about the future of the CoCo and the future of Scrabble. I'd be honored to remain a part of that team in 2024 and '25.

Candidate for Executive Director

Once again, one person registered to run for Executive Director (me). Here’s an excerpt from my election platform:

“This year marks my ten-year anniversary as a player in the Scrabble community. In 2023, I stepped up our fundraising efforts. I personally raised more than $4,000 in contributions from donors for the North American Collins Championship (NACC). I also successfully registered the CoCo as a charity on the Benevity corporate giving platform, making us eligible to receive matching donations from many companies. And I am delighted to share that we received our first donation with corporate matching from Google this month!

I spearheaded efforts to build brand awareness and reach new players through several initiatives. One was the design and distribution of free CoCo bookmarks with a QR code that routes to the CoCo’s website. These bookmarks are now available in Little Free Libraries and independent bookstores around the country, making it easier than ever for a word nerd to discover tournament Scrabble. A second initiative I spearheaded this year—with significant contributions from Wayne Dyer—was launch of the CoCo merch store to help the CoCo and its tournaments get noticed by new people in new places, one shirt at a time.”

Vote!

The hundreds of CoCo members around the world will receive a unique link by email from ElectionBuddy, our online voting system. All votes are anonymous. You will have about ten days to cast your ballot. After voting closes, we’ll announce the results of the election here and introduce your new leadership team. Make your voice heard and cast those ballots!

(P.S. If you think you should have received a ballot today, but don’t see it in your email inbox, check your spam folder. If you don’t see it there, contact us at info@cocoscrabble.org and we’ll check if an internet monster ate your ballot or if we lack a current email address for you.)