Bill Fitzgerald, who has served as CARA Program Director since January 2006, will serve as Interim Executive Director effective Aug. 30.

"I'm going to need to get up to speed, but the assurance I can give to any CARA member is that this transition will be seamless," Fitzgerald says. "They won't notice any difference. We're not going to shortchange anybody."

Fitzgerald was born and raised in Chicago and volunteered with CARA for more than a decade. He developed CARA's training program in the summer of 1989. It was the first training program of its kind in Chicago. In the mid-90s, he convinced Carey Pinkowski to allow CARA to have a tent at the end of the marathon. "We were the first ever to have a tent at the end of a marathon, and I remember so many runners sticking their head in and saying, 'What is this tent?'"

He also brings nearly 30 years of administration and management skills to CARA. Fitgerald worked for nearly 30 years at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. He holds an M.A. in Public Administration/Political Science from Northeastern Illinois State University.

Ann Marie Houlihan, who served as CARA Executive Director since April 2005, left for a job in private industry. A CARA press release stated, "The CARA Board of Directors acknowledges her contributions and wishes her well in her new pursuits."

On being selected for the position, Fitzgerald says: "It is a compliment, but I wasn't surprised by it. It was pretty much just a natural progression of things."