The Rappahannock Area Community Services Board (RACSB) has selected Jane Yaun as its new executive director, effective July 1, 2017. Yaun will succeed outgoing Executive Director Ronald W. Branscome, who will retire on June 30.
“After a comprehensive search process, we’re pleased to be promoting from within RACSB an excellent candidate and leader for this key position,” said RACSB Board Chairwoman Linda Ball. “Jane’s experience as an integral staff member of RACSB will help us make a smooth transition in leadership, while providing important services to our community.”
“We interviewed a number of people from outside the organization, but when we looked at Jane’s strengths, she was a much stronger candidate than anybody else we interviewed,” said Board Member Jack Rowley, who headed the Executive Search Committee. “She is highly qualified, dedicated to RACSB, and committed to helping people,” he said. In addition, she has outstanding leadership skills, which will help guide the organization going forward.”
Yaun began her RACSB career in 1988 as a residential counselor in the organization’s first supervised apartment for people with severe and persistent mental illness. She later headed the mental health residential program, provided intensive in-home therapy services to adolescents with serious emotional disturbance, worked as an emergency services therapist, and served as vocational manager at the psychosocial rehabilitation program.
Yaun left RACSB in 1994 to work at Snowden. She left Snowden in 1996 to work at the Rappahannock Council on Domestic Violence, and returned to RACSB in 1997.
In 2005 Yaun went to work for the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, analyzing policies that affected mental health services. She returned to RACSB in 2008, serving as the Quality Assurance Coordinator, before becoming the agency’s first Deputy Executive Director in 2014.
Yaun graduated from Mary Washington College, and completed her Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Counseling at Boston University in 1992.
She completed a 10-month executive leadership program with the National Council for Behavioral Health in 2015.
“I am honored to be the next Executive Director,” Yaun said. “I am grateful for having Ron Branscome serve as my mentor for more than 26 years, and I look forward to engaging the community, individuals served, and stakeholders in fulfilling the mission of the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board.”
Yaun resides in the City of Fredericksburg with her 9-year-old daughter Kate.
The Rappahannock Area Community Services Board provides public mental health, developmental disability, substance abuse, and prevention/early intervention services to the residents of the City of Fredericksburg and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania, and Stafford.
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