Dear American Diabetes Association Leadership (those who remain):
I am writing to formally apply for a communications and marketing leadership role at the American Diabetes Association (ADA).
With a clear understanding that you hadn’t specifically posted about this particular opening, it’s clear you need to create and fill this role immediately.
My understanding of the position’s title: Marketing & Communications Leader (with Backbone Included).
Given the ADA’s masterclass in brand self-destruction that recently unfolded at your 2026 Scientific Sessions in NOLA, it’s obvious that your PR department is either unqualified, hiding under a desk, or still drunk from all the hours spent on Bourbon Street instead of managing the conference communications.
As a veteran journalist, editor, and media leader with more than 25 years of experience, I’m a perfect fit for what you need.
Honestly, you can’t afford to wait.
My CV offers what the ADA is clearly lacking right now: a backbone.
Most importantly, I bring a demonstrated commitment to transparency and basic integrity - traits that seem to have been barred from entering the NOLA convention center most recently.
In reading about the PR debacle you created, I note that it takes a spectacular level of… incompetence…to alienate your own core community this efficiently.
I can only assume you were attempting innovative stakeholder engagement. But it backfired, largely because of your decision to deploy private security and local police to physically remove renowned researchers and clinicians, along with confiscating print copies of an editorial written by your own flagship journal’s editor-in-chief.
You claim to be promoting a “non-partisan” atmosphere, but all evidence points to the contrary. Instead, your knee-jerk reaction shows that you were simply censoring the very people and science you report to be about.
What a remarkable way to post your need for a new style of communications and media leader, by creating a monumentally embarrassing public crisis.
With my 25 years of journalism and media experience, I can immediately start helping to stop the bleeding from this self-inflicted wound. Just count as a bonus my attendance at the SciSessions between 2012 and 2022, and the thousands of hours reading and reporting on everything-diabetes for more than a decade.
My credentials include a PWD degree, now 42 years strong thanks to type 1 diabetes since childhood. That means I live your Standards of Diabetes Care personally, and know what they mean inside and out.
My time as a patient advocate years ago is also valuable, as I tried to be a voice working to teach the ADA about responsible social media use and two-way communications. Clearly, anything gleaned by the ADA in those years has been forgotten and needs a refresher.
Let's be blunt: you don’t need another robotic corporate spokesperson to draft hollow, weak emails that insult the intelligence of clinicians, researchers, and PWDs.
You need someone who can come in, clean up this catastrophic mess, and act like an actual adult in the room. 👋
Here is what I bring to an organization currently suffering from a reputational low blood sugar like you are:
- Crisis Communications: I know how to execute communication strategies grounded in reality, ensuring accountability and damage control, and making sure the ADA isn’t stuck in a defensive, cowardly stonewalling marketing mindset. I’m a media person who understands diabetes and the way it all intersects. You need that more than ever right now.
- Editorial Leadership: I have spent a quarter-century navigating complex media landscapes in diabetes and healthcare. I understand how to balance institutional compliance with an absolute respect for free scientific speech and editorial independence.
- Data Analytics: Listen, I’ve been tracking diabetes data since I was a kid in the 1980s. I’ve transitioned from written data-logs, to computer spreadsheets, to mobile apps, to cloud-based algorithms. Fingerstick meters, CGMS, pumps, and MDI. Industry tech, inhaled insulin, DIY tech, and beyond. Not to mention the latest in emerging AI tools, for better or worse. #WeAreNotWaiting
- Brand Rebuild: I can oversee internal and external messaging that begins the long process of reintroducing integrity to the ADA and restoring trust among the medical professionals, researchers, PWDs, and donors who are currently questioning why they support you.
It takes a monumental amount of effort to turn a premier scientific conference like SciSessioms into a national case study on internal censorship, PR malpractice, and member alienation.
To dig your way out of this, you need an editorial leader and communicator who knows how to tell the truth, face the media, and champion the very science your organization claims to promote.
I am ready to bring that level of integrity and blunt strategic clarity to the ADA immediately. I look forward to discussing how we can begin the necessary work of repairing your fractured brand (shakes head again at your amazing stupefying lack of sense).
With Sincerest Urgency,
This Guy with a Lazy Pancreas
Comments