by Demetrios Rhompotis

Charles H. Cotros, of Memphis, Tennessee, has served as Director of Allied Waste Industries Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona since July 2004 and as Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board from October 2004 through 2007. He began his career in 1960 with Tri-State General Food Supply ("Tri-State"), which merged with SYSCO in 1974, where he served in various positions prior to being elected Chief Operating Officer in 1995, President in 1999, and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors in 2000. He served on the Board of Sysco from 1986 until his retirement in 2003. A graduate of Christian Brothers College in Memphis and Tulane University in New Orleans, he is married to the former Constance (Connie) Pappas. The couple has two daughters, one son, and eleven grandchildren. Active in Greek Orthodox parishes in Houston, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee, Cotros is an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Leadership 100 was created in 1984 under the guidance of then Archbishop Iakovos as an endowment fund of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, through which Greek Orthodox leaders were asked to commit $10,000 a year, for a total of $100,000 each, to maintain the life-sustaining ministries of the Church. More than 800 people have joined since its inception and membership includes a broad spectrum of Greek Orthodox leaders: men and women of all ages and from every field.

As we are about to wrap the 21st annual conference, what do you think were some of the highlights?

Let me start by saying that we have had a lot of great conferences. To me this one is the most admirable. We departed from some of the things we used to do. We took Friday night and offered this concert (with Mario Frangoulis), which to me was spectacular. We also had the Memorial of the Greek American soldiers: Mr. Liveris did a great job in his presentation; Nicole Petallides with her speech was outstanding. We tried to do something different and people enjoyed it.

What are some of the things that you want to accomplish during your tenure?

Well, it’s basically a continuation of what we’ve always done. We had great chairmen in the past, we have a great office led by Paulette Poulos, George Schira, as our Communications Director, and the rest of the staff and I think we’ll be able to get our message out. Our mission is very simple: we exist to support the ministries of the Archdiocese and we’ve decided that our main charity is the seminary. In 2007, 2008, 2009 our endowment suffered as well as our membership. Things now are maybe getting back to normal, so I think we can grow our membership again. I’d like to see us reach 1000 members over the next 2-3 years, an additional 125 members that is. And I think we should be able to do it.

Something that you would like to seal your tenure with as chairman?

I’d like to see us appealing more to the youth. We have about 125 Young Partners and my hope is that we can expand that. I’d like to see two, three hundred. That’s where we are going to draw our future leaders from. Now, let me tell you that is something we have done fairly well, but I think we must do better.

Many people say that without losing focus from the main mission, there are areas where the Leadership can play the role that its name implies. Some people have talked about helping Greek education here, others, like Mr. Athens, are urging that more be done for Greece, which faces one of the worst crisis of her modern state existence.

Greece has much greater problems than the Leadership can support. As I said before, the last 2-3 years were difficult for us. We have a policy and we can’t go lower than our endowment amount, and what that means is that we’ll never spend the principal of our membership.

But it’s not just money - you could offer ideas, words of hope, perhaps organize a forum on what could be done in Greece, as Mr. Liveris proposed.

I agree, we’ll be happy to, those are things that we can do. Unfortunately, we can’t get them the financial support which they need. Their problems are in the billions. We are no way near there, but we can certainly do things. There is another group in the Leadership that claims we can do more to promote Hellenism. We can do both. I have a hard time distinguishing between Orthodoxy and Hellenism. Another challenge is how to meet the needs of the diversity of our membership. Especially as we are trying to expand our Young Partners, we need to listen to them and the ideas they are bringing in. And I’m planning on doing that.

Some people have expressed concern about the transparency of the Archdiocese’s finances. Also the fact that it is directly under the Ecumenical Patriarchate (an organization with precarious legal status in Turkey, functioning under the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs) leaves it very little room for meaningful decision-making here.

I think that our Church in America has different needs from other Churches around the world. I think we need to be able to find the solutions for the problems we have here. I respect the Archdiocese, I respect the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it has been very meaningful to our Church, but I think they need to recognize that this Church here has some different issues. We need to able help solve our problems.

Is there a message that you would like to extend to L100 members and the community at large?

I think Leadership 100 is a great organization that exists to service our Church. I hope we can appeal to more of our people to join the organization; I think that they will see the scope of our work. We have given scholarships to 289 seminarians! That’s a lot of people. Of those, 110 have already been ordained priests. We have had a tremendous impact. We have given more than $15 million in scholarships.

Would you be willing to explore ways of modernizing the Church and changing or abolishing some aspects of it that no longer work?

We don’t get to the liturgical aspect of the Church. But what I have always advocated is that the language of our Church should be the language of the country. We try to incorporate as much Greek as we can, but nobody who goes to our churches doesn’t understand English. Besides, we have many converts and they need to understand the Liturgy. And I have spoken about this issue to the Archbishop.

What about the status of our parishes, where the laity can’t really play a meaningful role. Actually, the process of being approved as a candidate for a parish council position is outright humiliating to citizens of a free country like the US.

I think at the Clergy-Laity Conferences that we have every other year there is a dialogue going on about those problems. I’m a little disappointed that I don’t see a lot of follow up from those conferences. And I think that the laity has an awful lot to offer.