(My personal opinion, not EV’s:)
EV is winding down and being on this board is quite a lot of work. This makes it very hard to recruit for! The positive flip side though of the fact of the wind-down means that the cultural leadership we are doing is a bit less impactful than it was say a year or two ago.
When we faced the decision of whether to keep searching or accept the candidates in front of us, I considered many factors but eventually agreed that it was ok to prioritize allowing the existing board members to leave (which they couldn’t do until we found replacements), even if the new folks were not ideal in every conceivable way. I wished we had a better gender balance too, but ultimately since projects are spinning out, it’s going to be much more on those individual projects and less on EV central to figure that out!
(I’m very excited about our new trustees despite this!)
There are so many different bags and brands available that you should specify more constraints if you want more personalized recommendations. Vegan is not too hard to satisfy—most luggage that’s vegan won’t necessarily mention it, you just have to look in the description for animal products to avoid (leather / suede mostly).
For me personally, my main carry is a Tom Bihn Techonaut 30 - it’s big enough to carry 5+ days of clothing and my laptop and other gear without needing another bag, but lightweight enough that when I need more space, I am happy to carry it as just a small backpack alongside my Travelpro Maxlite 5.
I also like the /r/onebag subreddit.