David Young, Longtime WGA West Leader, to Step Down

variety.com:

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer David Young, the longtime executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, is stepping down, the guild announced on Friday.

Ellen Stutzman, who served as chief negotiator through its 148-day strike this year, will take over as executive director. Young was initially expected to lead this year’s negotiations, but surprisingly took a medical leave in February, shortly before talks began. “It has been an honor to work with and for writers,” Young said in a statement on Friday. “I’ve also been lucky to collaborate with the Guild’s staff, which is superb.” Even though Young has been on leave since February, he was still consulting with the WGA behind the scenes, according to a source who spoke with him over the summer.

Several guild leaders issued statements in praise of Young’s tenure. Meredith Stiehm, the president of WGA West, called Young a “shrewd, creative strategist.” David Goodman, co-chair of the 2023 negotiating committee, credited him as a “mentor” to other guild leaders. “Like all of us in this generation of Guild leadership, everything I know about using writer power to make writers’ lives better I learned from David Young,” said Chris Keyser, the other co-chair of the negotiating committee. “If we have become a kind of symbol of what a union – even a small union – can do, it is because of what David encouraged us to believe was possible.” Young was named executive director of the guild in 2005.