Board Fellowship and Brainstorming Session, October 12, 2025

[Brett Neese]

Hi all,

In the interest of transparency, I wanted to share that our new board met up on Sunday to discuss many topics. This was not an official board meeting - no decisions were made and no agenda was followed; it was an opportunity for us to gather in community as a new board and determine what we know and what we need(ed) to know to help the lab flourish.

Topics discussed included: governance and administration; finances; operations and facilities; community and membership; and technology and infrastructure. 

We wanted to thank the previous board(s) for all of their work to make HSL what it is today. We also want to emphasize that the new board is in complete agreement that we aim to be extremely transparent, open, and to be enablers for the community to flourish, collectively. 

In that vein, we have committed to delivering a clear financial status report to the community by Q4 this year (and most likely much sooner.) The reason it hasn't already happened is that we're still gathering the data needed to put out an accurate report ourselves! So we appreciate everyone's patience while we sort out some of the details. 

We also want to thank those who have helped us in this transition by giving us advice, information, and support. We can't do this alone, so we appreciate all of your support. Please continue to send us your feedback.

Finally, we wanted to note that documentation will be a huge focus for us so that future community members and leaders have an easier time enabling the lab to flourish. 

More soon.

Your secretary,

Brett