Heather Price named executive director. 

The Commercial Food Equipment Service Association (CFESA) has launched a management transition initiative. This initiative will eventually move the organization's day to day operations to a team of people employed directly by CFESA from its current association management company. As part of this initiative, CFESA named Heather Price its new executive director and the first person employed directly by the association.

At this point, CFESA's present headquarters team, employed by the association's longtime management company, continues to handle many of the day-to-day functions that come with running the association.

This transition comes as CFESA prepares to celebrate the association's 50th anniversary during its fall conference, which takes place Oct. 7-9 in New Orleans. "Everyone wants to celebrate their past but our focus is on what our future will look like," said Joe Pierce, president of Pierce Parts and Service and president of CFESA. "That's what we want to talk about with our 50th anniversary. We are trying to prepare our organization for the next 50 years. And to be more in line with other associations we had to bring this in-house."

Pierce said the decision to travel this route was roughly 15 months in the making and began when the CFESA Board of Directors hired a facilitator to help the group develop a short- and long-term plan for the association. "What came out of our conversation with the facilitator is our need to have a strategic plan," Pierce said. "Many of us who have been with the association for a lot of years had done SWOT analysis and the like but the facilitator brought up things we have never really thought about. By having in-house people we would improve our ability to control the direction the association is going."

An exact time frame as to when the transition will be complete is unclear at moment.