Leaving Well: nonprofit leadership guidance for workplace exits and transitions

This is Leaving Well, where we talk about the reality that People Leave™️ in nonprofits and the social impact sector. Through this podcast, you will receive expert insights on leadership exits and transitions, the benefits of interim leadership, and sustainable succession planning in nonprofits. Listen to learn transition strategies for executive director, CEO, and board of directors leadership during resignations, terminations, and unfortunate circumstances such as death.

98: The Exit Hook - What You Owe (And Don't Owe) When You Leave (Series Part Four) 03/03/2026

98: The Exit Hook - What You Owe (And Don't Owe) When You Leave (Series Part Four) Navigate voluntary departures, involuntary exits, and long tenures that have lasted too long. Understand transition obligations, severance negotiations, and how to leave well without leaving everything. --- The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well You're exhausted. You're the only one who knows how the donor database works. Board members text you on weekends. Your team escalates every decision to you. You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential. Here's what they're not saying: your indispensability is an organizational liability. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status. Real accountability isn't about how much you personally deliver. It's about ensuring delivery continues without you. Because here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You're temporary. Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready. I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving. I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I document everything. I build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally. This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than being indispensable. What I’ve learned from being professionally temporary is that every leader should operate with an interim mindset. Because functionally, you are interim. Your tenure is temporary even if you don't know the end date yet. This series is for nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it. It's for board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff. It's for funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning. It's for anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it. Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying. It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you. Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured. This series is about changing that—one hook at a time. The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work. /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/40178425

97: Getting Off the Hook Without Abandoning Ship (Series Part Three) 02/24/2026

97: Getting Off the Hook Without Abandoning Ship (Series Part Three) Address the guilt, shame, and fear keeping you on hooks you should release. Learn to distinguish between healthy disengagement and abandonment, and discover what you actually owe when you step back. --- The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well You're exhausted. You're the only one who knows how the donor database works. Board members text you on weekends. Your team escalates every decision to you. You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential. Here's what they're not saying: your indispensability is an organizational liability. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status. Real accountability isn't about how much you personally deliver. It's about ensuring delivery continues without you. Because here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You're temporary. Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready. I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving. I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I document everything. I build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally. This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than being indispensable. What I’ve learned from being professionally temporary is that every leader should operate with an interim mindset. Because functionally, you are interim. Your tenure is temporary even if you don't know the end date yet. This series is for nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it. It's for board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff. It's for funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning. It's for anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it. Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying. It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you. Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured. This series is about changing that—one hook at a time. The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work. /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/40166300

96: Who's Really on the Hook? Mapping Organizational Accountability (Series Part Two) 02/17/2026

96: Who's Really on the Hook? Mapping Organizational Accountability (Series Part Two) Map every major organizational function across strategic, operational, and governance domains. Identify dangerous gaps, problematic overlaps, and the accountability vacuum threatening your next leadership transition. ----- The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well You're exhausted. You're the only one who knows how the donor database works. Board members text you on weekends. Your team escalates every decision to you. You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential. Here's what they're not saying: your indispensability is an organizational liability. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status. Real accountability isn't about how much you personally deliver. It's about ensuring delivery continues without you. Because here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You're temporary. Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready. I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving. I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I document everything. I build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally. This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than being indispensable. What I’ve learned from being professionally temporary is that every leader should operate with an interim mindset. Because functionally, you are interim. Your tenure is temporary even if you don't know the end date yet. This series is for nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it. It's for board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff. It's for funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning. It's for anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it. Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying. It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you. Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured. This series is about changing that—one hook at a time. The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work. /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39954720

95: The Accountability Paradox - Why Great Leaders Get Themselves Off the Hook (Series Part One) 02/10/2026

95: The Accountability Paradox - Why Great Leaders Get Themselves Off the Hook (Series Part One) Discover why staying on every hook diminishes your accountability to mission, and learn to audit your own indispensability before it becomes an organizational crisis. ----- The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well You're exhausted. You're the only one who knows how the donor database works. Board members text you on weekends. Your team escalates every decision to you. You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential. Here's what they're not saying: your indispensability is an organizational liability. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status. Real accountability isn't about how much you personally deliver. It's about ensuring delivery continues without you. Because here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You're temporary. Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready. I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving. I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I document everything. I build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally. This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than being indispensable. What I’ve learned from being professionally temporary is that every leader should operate with an interim mindset. Because functionally, you are interim. Your tenure is temporary even if you don't know the end date yet. This series is for nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it. It's for board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff. It's for funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning. It's for anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it. Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying. It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you. Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured. This series is about changing that—one hook at a time. The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work. /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39954660

94: The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well 02/03/2026

94: The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well The Off the Hook Framework: A Leadership Series on Accountability, Delegation, and Leaving Well You're exhausted. You're the only one who knows how the donor database works. Board members text you on weekends. Your team escalates every decision to you. You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. And everyone tells you how dedicated you are. How committed. How essential. Here's what they're not saying: your indispensability is an organizational liability. This is the accountability paradox at the heart of nonprofit leadership. The leader who won't get off the hook—who holds every responsibility, hoards every relationship, controls every decision—isn't demonstrating commitment. They're creating a single point of failure with a nonprofit tax status. Real accountability isn't about how much you personally deliver. It's about ensuring delivery continues without you. Because here's the truth no one wants to say out loud: You're temporary. Your tenure will end—through retirement, new opportunity, burnout, termination, or death. The only question is whether your organization will be ready. I bring a specific lens to this work: I'm an interim leader. I provide temporary executive leadership for nonprofits in transition. Every engagement I take begins with an exit date. I'm hired knowing I'm leaving. I've learned to lead with non-attachment—caring deeply about the work and the people while holding my departure lightly. I document everything. I build systems that run without me. I transfer relationships that belong to the organization, not to me personally. This isn't because I care less. It's because I care about sustainability more than being indispensable. What I’ve learned from being professionally temporary is that every leader should operate with an interim mindset. Because functionally, you are interim. Your tenure is temporary even if you don't know the end date yet. This series is for nonprofit CEOs and Executive Directors who know intellectually they should delegate but can't seem to actually do it. It's for board members who don't know what hooks they're on—or who are on hooks that belong to staff. It's for funders and foundation program officers who see organizations struggling with leadership transitions and want to support better succession planning. It's for anyone who's ever said "if I don't do it, it won't get done right" and meant it. Everything in this series is succession planning work—just not the way most people think about it. Succession planning isn't just creating a document for when you leave. It's how you lead every day while you're staying. It's documenting your decision-making frameworks so they're transferable. It's building redundancy in critical relationships. It's developing your team's strategic capacity instead of protecting them from complexity. It's getting yourself off hooks you've held so long you've forgotten they don't belong to you. Most nonprofits don't have written succession plans. Most leadership transitions are managed as crises instead of planned transitions. Most organizational knowledge walks out the door when leaders leave because it was never captured. This series is about changing that—one hook at a time. The greatest act of nonprofit leadership isn't being indispensable. It's building something that doesn't need you to be great. Welcome to The Off the Hook series. Let's get to work. /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39954510

93: Doing Strategic Planning Differently with Beth Saunders 12/09/2025

93: Doing Strategic Planning Differently with Beth Saunders Beth is passionate about making missions happen. Throughout her consulting career, Beth has helped nonprofit leaders connect people and programs to mission and goals. Her MapMoveMeasure™ framework is a guide for elevating stewardship and increasing supporter engagement. Beth’s customers say working with her introduces fresh perspective and new ways of thinking about their work. And they always gain clarity, strategic direction, and alignment. Beth’s consulting practice reflects her life experience. Studying abroad, earning her MBA, taking a mid-career detour to volunteer and travel, leaving her corporate job to serve in AmeriCorps VISTA and ultimately leading her own consulting practice have contributed to Beth’s commitment for connecting passion with purpose. Quotes: “Planning strategically is how I reframe strategic planning. I often see strategic plans that have a high level strategy or big goals at the top and dive very quickly into the execution of it. So it's a little thin on strategy and quite robust on operations. That is actually leapfrogging right over the opportunity for a leadership team to really sit in that strategic thinking space.” “Planning strategically from my perspective starts with a very clear, well articulated vision statement that is supported with outcomes the organization can actually achieve.” “Every strategic plan has vision in it. And the way to make your strategic plan more strategic is to really build out that vision within your accountability and within your capacity to think about a roadmap of outcomes.” “Be clear not only on your vision, but your roadmap of getting there. Not the work to do, but the change you're making along the way.” To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39154730

92: Fostering Thriving Artists with Laura Gouin 12/02/2025

91: Undoing the Language of Stakeholder with Austen Smith and Julie McFarland 11/25/2025

91: Undoing the Language of Stakeholder with Austen Smith and Julie McFarland Austen Smith (they/them) is a spirit-led creative with decades of community advocacy and organizing, program evaluation, intersectional qualitative analysis, and community participatory research. Their work addresses national housing disparities, racial inequity, disability justice, gender inclusivity, and the metaphysical impacts of racialized oppression. Currently, Austen is stewarding ImaginationDoulas, a spirit-led creative education program designed for racially and culturally marginalized artists. Learn more at www.imaginationdoulas.com. Check out the , a free, six-week micro course designed for those who are ready to explore creativity as a spiritual discipline. Julie McFarland was a housing and service provider within homelessness response systems before beginning technical assistance on a national level. Julie's work has focused on designing more person centered and streamlined systems, more effective service delivery, elevating and uplifting the voices of people closest to the solutions, and creating more equitable systems for people experiencing homelessness. Julie values partnership with people who challenge the status quo and existing power structures to shift to more equitable and inclusive approaches. Quotes: “Stakeholder: The phrase is rooted in the act of driving stakes into a land which forcibly marks territory as one's own. And so using that casually in our work could unintentionally evoke the trauma of having someone's stake, possession, or even assuming some power we have that is not necessarily ours.” - Naomi Hattaway “The word carries such a violent connotation because words cast spells. They all of the history of that term. We're connecting to this foundational ideology that requires and necessitates colonialism. Bringing that energy into the field of consulting or the field of philanthropy inherently ties the money that is meant to incite liberatory realities for folks to this idea of stolen land and stolen property. It keeps us in a cycle when we continue to use specific words.” - Austen Smith “It feels like a responsibility, in particular as a white woman, that once I become aware of something like this that has such a violent history and violent roots, it is critical to make the pivot and not continue to perpetuate that harm through the use of language in itself.” - Julie McFarland “I would appreciate a resource of language, words, phrases, or terms that are aging out. That we could start the conversation of normalizing language being a living thing because this is so normal.” - Austen Smith “Everything comes back to relationship all the time. And if we are in deep, authentic relationship with people, this act of educating and offering an opportunity to shift, it typically goes so much better when that trust is already established.” - Julie McFarland To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39124900

90: Thaler Pekar on Capturing the Stories of an Organization 11/18/2025

90: Thaler Pekar on Capturing the Stories of an Organization An award-winning expert on organizational storytelling, Thaler Pekar works with visionary leaders to build and sustain cultures of excellent communication – cultures in which people can effectively speak and listen to each other, and to their audiences. For 20 years, she and her team at Thaler Pekar & Partners have advised leaders on strengthening trust, alignment, and influence through speaking, listening, narrative, and story. Working across sectors, Thaler delivers her four trademarked communication processes; produces multiplatform media; and develops oral histories and story collections. Recognized by both the BBC and the Smithsonian Institution as one of the world’s leading experts in applied narrative, Thaler has delivered keynote speeches on five continents to thousands of people. Her influential work on the ethics of working with story, participatory narrative, story elicitation, and persuasive communication is featured in seven books. Thaler Pekar & Partners' ” - SSIR essay Quotes: “Things are constantly shifting our perspective, our wisdom's growing, and ideally the stories are polyphonic.” “A great leader, a great communicator, can tell a story that connects the past, the present and the future, and creates spaciousness for what comes next. It's sensical. Great storytelling is placemaking, meaning making, sensemaking, and it invites people to see themselves in the future that’s being created.” “I don't think of legacy as what's left behind. I think of it as what is carried forward.” “One thing about legacy is the danger of a hero narrative and just shining the light on one person, when there are other people in the shadows. And in fact, you're creating those shadows if you're shining the light just on one person.” To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/39024905

89: Teaching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders How to Leave Well 11/11/2025

87: Nani Jansen Reventlow on Intentionally Funding Leadership Transitions 10/28/2025

86: Kate Harris on Structural Change as a Tool for Social Change 10/21/2025

86: Kate Harris on Structural Change as a Tool for Social Change It took 40 years but Kate finally figured out how to embrace change instead of run from it. After all, it's the only constant and there's some comfort in that. She loves all things salty - the ocean, margaritas, and even your saltiest board member. Kate can really get behind a lazy afternoon, a home improvement project, and teaching her dog useless tricks. Quotes: “When we use scary words like merger or dissolution, or the way that we soften dissolution by talking about sunsetting and winding down, it sounds great, but the reframe is that all that is structural change.” “Your mission is important. Your vision is important. That's your destination. That's where you're going. Structure is the vehicle you're taking to get you there.” “Mergers are an excellent tool for getting an organization to inventory every single thing that they are about. You cannot leave any stone unturned. You don't get to do that in a structural change. And that's why I love it as a tool. Because even if at the end of the day we decide that these two organizations shouldn't merge, each organization is stronger for having gone through the process of exploring that potential collaboration. They understand their unique value better. They understand each other better and where they can collaborate.” “Mission resilience is how you actually make sure that even if the structure changes, even if the name changes, the whole reason we are here to do any of this is because of the people at the center that we care about. And we're not gonna leave anybody behind.” “My whole reason for doing this work is that structural change is a tool. It's a tool for social change. It's underutilized in the nonprofit sector. So I want to normalize this conversation.” Find Kate: To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/38609080

85: Althea Seloover on Detoxing from Workaholism + Finding Congruence 10/14/2025

84: Astronomer Meets Coldplay 10/07/2025

83: Lauren Andraski on the Best Ways to Bring Consultants into Your Organization 09/30/2025

82: Elizabeth DiAlto on Getting Fully Rooted into Who You Are 09/23/2025

82: Elizabeth DiAlto on Getting Fully Rooted into Who You Are Known for her inclusive, humorous, and uniquely transformative approach to spirituality and the healing arts, Elizabeth DiAlto has been helping people tap into self love, healing, wholeness, and liberation since 2013. The Founder of the House of E, The School of Sacred Embodiment, and Wild Soul Movement™, Elizabeth’s distinctive medicine weaves together mystical + erotic intelligence, sensual + embodied movement, and integrative healing + energy work. Her methods are a potent synthesis of various trainings as well as ancestral tools + practices from the mixed/multiple lineages of her Caribbean, Indigenous, and European heritages. From 2015-2024, Elizabeth hosted the beloved Embodied Podcast, currently co-hosts the Mystical Aunties Show, and is soon launching Heat & Honey with Louiza “Weeze” Doran. Elizabeth is the proud owner of one of the most contagious laughs around (if you know, you know!). In 2018 + 2019, she did stand-up comedy for fun, performing on stages in LA and NYC. Her favorite social activities are salsa dancing and karaoke. She loves driving her Mini Cooper, is the queen of parallel parking, and most recently, she’s elated to be back in the “motherland”— NYC, where she lives in a cozy and light-filled Brooklyn studio. Quotes: I always encourage people to think: what are you rooting into? We're much more easily swayed if we're not rooted. Someone could push you over if you're not rooted. Someone could bully you. When you're rooted in something, it's deep and there's practice and devotion to back it up. When something might upset folks, you can acknowledge these things. One of the most inclusive practices out there is just acknowledgement. Grief is an emotion that gets masked by other things. More socially acceptable things. Anger is often such a great mask for grief, because anger feels powerful. The reason people don't allow themselves to feel grief is because it feels weak. A lot of people associate grief or sadness or depression with weakness. It is not, it is so human. It's the most human thing. In a world that is so inhumane and so dehumanizing, we have to ask how do we be human together? How do we honor the humanity? How do we rehumanize if we're constantly being dehumanized? Grief is one of the ways. Grief is the great tenderizer. It softens us in the places where we're hard. When you let yourself grieve, it's connective tissue to your own self, your own soul, your own ethics, morals, and values. Find Elizabeth: To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/38268565

81: Wellesley Michael on Amplifying the Work of Vice President Harris 09/16/2025

81: Wellesley Michael on Amplifying the Work of Vice President Harris Wellesley Michael has the sweetest little rescue pup Petunia, and they do everything possible together. Always looking for a new Lego set, she will forever be a theatre kid, and enjoys taking in D.C.'s vast theatre scene. Wellesley formed a passion for community organizing purely out of a search for hope, support, and community after the murder of George Floyd. She then got trapped in the world of politics by working on campaigns in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. In D.C., she has worked on digital communications in the U.S. House, Senate, and the Biden-Harris White House. Currently, Wellesley is building the first-ever Creator Program for Senate Democrats — connecting Senators with content creators and new media. Quotes: “It eases my anxiety a lot to know the finality of something, but that doesn't make it less difficult.” “My job was managing the VP comms accounts and I needed to make sure that the American public saw the total breadth of everything that Kamala Harris had done as Vice President that people didn't give her credit for or know about. A lot of the things that she did were not in the media.” “We knew the job was ending and there were different paths of what the ending would look like. No matter what happened, on January 20th, the Biden-Harris administration was over. It was just a matter of, would it be then the Harris-Walz administration moving in? But there were many waves of grief.” “The hardest part of any sort of high impact work that's really short is your life transitions so quickly to something different. And when you're so focused on the outcomes for someone else all day, it's hard to manage your self care. And even in the most basic sense of where am I getting food?” Find Wellesley: To learn more about Leaving Well, visit To support the production of this podcast, peruse my or . This podcast is produced by . /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/38169220

80: Brooke Richie-Babbage on Strategic Planning 04/21/2025

80: Brooke Richie-Babbage on Strategic Planning Brooke Richie-Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high-impact nonprofits, and the host of Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. Brooke has spent the past 23 years working as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She has founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP), where she served as founder and Executive Director for 11 years, the Sterling Network NYC and the NetLab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she served as Director of Network Initiatives for six years, and the Social Justice Accelerator (SJA), an initiative of the Urban Justice Center, where she has served as SJA Director since 2019. She has been a visiting lecturer and featured speaker at numerous graduate and law schools, including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Fordham. She has presented papers at conferences around the country on social entrepreneurship, non-profit leadership, and community lawyering, and co-produced and hosted the City Watch radio show on WBAI. She served as Secretary and then Chair of the Social Welfare Committee of the NYC Bar Association, as well as the Co-Chair of the Policy Action Committee of the citywide Welfare Reform Network, and an appointed member of both the Governor’s statewide Child Care Policy Working Group and Mayor Bloomberg’s Adolescent Fatherhood Advisory Council. She has served as a member or officer of several non-profit boards, including as Board Chair for the Community Resource Exchange, and most recently as an officer for the boards of the Urban Justice Center and Nonprofit New York. Brooke received both her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons. Quotes: I think that there are two versions of your strategic plan. The internal serves as a roadmap for you and your team. It serves as a foundation for work planning, annual planning, next steps, and funding. Then there’s an external version. That goes on your website. That is your vision. That is ‘where are you taking this organization in the long term?’ There is no one way to do strategic planning. Release yourself from the tyranny of what strat planning is, and start with the question, ‘what is the organizational set of goals?’ The process can be whatever you want it to be. Strategic planning is not a pre-structured thing. It is a set of conversations that ideally help you determine where you want to go and what you want your adventure to feel like for all the interested parties. To connect with Brooke: ~ Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/36128130

79: Shannon Curtis on Presence and Creating Joyful Community 04/07/2025

78: Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark on Stepping Into and Out of a Role 03/31/2025

78: Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark on Stepping Into and Out of a Role Vital Voice Training is a communication consultancy out to revolutionize the conversation about good public speaking and leadership presence — from stressing out about your “ums and uhs” to working creatively at the intersection of you and your context. Since 2014, they’ve been bringing game-changing public speaking and communication training to individuals and organizations, specializing in building public speaking confidence, navigating difficult conversations, balancing authenticity and situational adaptivity, and bringing out their clients’ own unique charisma. Co-founders Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark are experienced professional actors — their approach is grounded in theater and performance, neuroscience, somatics, socio-linguistics, and organizational psychology. Their clients are leaders in the finance, venture capital, law, and tech industries, world-changing entrepreneurs, and best-selling authors, as well as in-demand keynote speakers who regularly bring their ground-breaking ideas and perspectives to stages all over the world. Casey Erin Clark is a voice, public speaking, and communication coach, performer, author, entrepreneur, podcast host, and leader in both the entertainment and business worlds. She is a fierce advocate for gender justice and spends her days speaking, teaching, and writing about the power of women’s voices, while seizing fulfilling opportunities to perform on screen and stage. In 2014, Casey and Julie Fogh co-founded Vital Voice Training, a voice and speech coaching company on a mission to change the conversation about what leaders are “supposed” to sound like and empower everyone to own the power of their full vocal instrument and presence. Casey hails from the cornfields of southern Illinois (where she grew up singing with her family Von Trapp-style) and has a BFA in musical theater from Illinois Wesleyan University. She also coaches musical theater pros of all ages, is a member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, performed at the 2013 Oscars with the Les Miserables movie cast, and sings with the Grammy-nominated and Tony-honored Broadway Inspirational Voices choir. Recommending romance novels and breakfast restaurants is her love language. Will perform the Lafayette speed rap from Hamilton on demand. Julie Fogh is a voice coach, podcast host, and interpersonal communications specialist who works with speakers and leaders helping them navigate their individual tensions and blocks, revealing the personal power and unique and captivating humanity that exists in all of us. Through Vital Voice Training, Julie and her co-founder Casey Erin Clark blend the toolbox of the professional actor with their powerful frameworks for embracing one's authentic speaking voice to businesses, schools, and organizations all over the country including Thrive Capital, Facebook, Google, NASA and The Hartford. Julie was raised in Seattle and earned her BA in Theatre and Women Studies from University of Washington. She earned an MFA in acting from Northern Illinois University, a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum that engaged with the physical body, the emotional life, imagination, use of language, character construction, non-verbal communication and the truth of the moment. She has studied with the Moscow Art Theatre and University of Copenhagen and has studied Meisner Technique with Kathryn Gately, Michael Chekhov Technique with Deborah Robertson, and Movement and Period Style with Lloyd Williamson. She loves YA novels, introverts, and her very vocal rescue cat, Ashland. Quotes: When we walk into a room, every time we go into a meeting, we are there for a purpose. We always communicate with a purpose in mind. So we need to give ourselves the agency to ask why am I here and what am I trying to accomplish? Our mission from the beginning of this company has been to expand our ideas of what leadership looks and sounds like. We do that in part by showing up with more of who we are, even in spaces where that is risky and where that may not always pay off. But we do it strategically, we do it bravely, and we do it consistently so that other people can also do it. Leaving Well is the ability to really figure out for yourself and for the people that you care about how to button this chapter, how to transition, how to move forward. To connect with Vital Voices: To connect with Casey: To connect with Julie ~ Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/35890005

77: People Leave; A Podcast Style Keynote About Nonprofit Workplace Transitions 03/24/2025

76: Ingrid Kirst on Interim Executive Director Engagements and Leaving Well 03/17/2025

75: Jennie Armstrong on Knowing When it’s Time to Leave Elected Office 03/10/2025

75: Jennie Armstrong on Knowing When it’s Time to Leave Elected Office Jennie supports women who are ready to step into their legacy and maximize the impact they can have in the world. She has dedicated her life + career to building a more equitable world and supporting female founders and leaders at every stage of their journey. 🪩 At Wild Awake, she supports ambitious consultants who better the world through her signature program Consultant Catalyst, which centers on strengthening your systems and operations, elevating as a leader, and creating a magnetic brand + knockout website. 🪄 Delve is a mission-driven communications and creative agency that launches social good initiatives and works with nonprofits to make their work as impactful as possible. 🏛️ Outside of Wild Awake and Delve, Jennie is an elected state representative in Alaska, where she advocates for LGBTQ+ equality, paid family leave, mental health, and reducing violence against women, among other progressive issues. When not working, you can find her exploring Alaska with her family, cooking, reading a romance novel, or taking a course. She has lived, worked, and traveled across four continents + over 30 countries. Main quote: I learned and grew so much from the experience of having people who don't know you make judgments about you, make threats against you, come to your home. And if anything, it helped me step into my highest self and feel more confident in who I am and operate even more closely to my North star. Because if every day I knew I was acting in that way, what people said about me meant so much less because I couldn't be shaken. I knew the place from which I was working. I knew the values that I hold. ‌Additional Quotes: Honestly, I just got scared. And I'm sad to say that because I didn't want to be scared and I didn't want them to ‘win’. But I just couldn't do it. If I didn't have kids, I would have just kept going. But I had my family to think about. Ultimately I just felt that it was going to erode me and age me in a way that was going to make me less effective. To me, success is going to be when a single mom can run for office and be in the legislature. That takes support. It takes planning. It takes thinking. Sometimes we have this thing where we want to look back. I think we need to just accept where we're at and then focus on what we're doing next because when we're holding on to the thing that we chose or didn’t choose to leave, it's taking away from the things that you can be doing and building right now. To connect with Jennie: ~ Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/35548545

74: Melanie Jones on the Importance of Having a Chief of Staff 03/03/2025

73: Lisa Marshall on Workplace Management and Leaving Well 02/24/2025

72: Minda Harts on Trust in the Workplace and Workplace Transitions 02/17/2025

72: Minda Harts on Trust in the Workplace and Workplace Transitions Minda Harts is a celebrated author and influential speaker, best known for her bestsellers "The Memo," "Right Within," and the YA book "You Are More Than Magic." She is a respected voice in advancing women of color, self-advocacy, and restoring trust at work. Minda frequently speaks at major conferences and companies, including Nike, Google, Disney, Best Buy, Dreamforce, and the Aspen Ideas Festival. As an NYU assistant professor, Minda shapes future leaders and empowers professionals. Honored by LinkedIn as the #1 Top Voice for Equity in the Workplace in 2020 and by Business Insider as one of the top 100 People Transforming Business in 2022. Minda is currently working on a new book with Flatiron Books, focusing on the crucial topic of restoring trust in the workplace. Main quote: “Each and every one of us, our voices are our legacy. And the moment that we allow people to shut our voices down, even ourselves, then that's impeding upon our legacy.” ‌Additional Quotes: “When it comes to trust in the workplace, we don't necessarily put a high value stake on it. In our romantic and platonic relationships, trust is everything. So why wouldn't we want that same character trait inside the workplace with our colleagues, with our managers, with our leadership. Because you can't have equity in the workplace without trust.” “You belong in every room, but not every room deserves to have you.” “Leaving well is freedom. Definition wise it’s one no longer feeling confined and I want us all to be free. I want us all to be able to experience our lives inside and outside the workplace, the way that we were created to experience them, which I feel is joy, peace and equity.” To purchase Minda’s books: Talk To Me Nice: | The Memo: | Right Within: | You Are More Than Magic: | To connect with Minda: ~ Take the To learn more about /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/35270550

71: An Interim Executive Director case study with Dress for Success Tampa Bay 02/10/2025

71: An Interim Executive Director case study with Dress for Success Tampa Bay Laurell Jones served with distinction in the United States Air Force and retired in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During her 23 year career she held multiple roles in financial management and financial analysis with increasing levels of leadership responsibility in international and US based locations. In Laurell’s post military career she was a Senior Managing Consultant with IBM for 14 years. Laurell has been a volunteer with Dress for Success Tampa Bay since 2018 and currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors. Laurell is passionate about empowering women to achieve economic independence. Laurell is a graduate of Syracuse University and also holds an MBA and MPA. She resides in Tampa with her husband. In her free time, Laurell enjoys mentoring youth, gardening, traveling and exploring Tampa. Judy Bensinger has a passion for women’s empowerment. Judy is on the Hillsborough County Commission on the Status of Women, the board of directors of Dress for Success Tampa Bay, and the Advisory Board of Gems. She is also a team leader for a new, international women’s organization: Age of Possibility. Judy sees 2025 as a great year full of opportunity and promise. Tanya Cielo is Sky Marketing’s founder and Lead Strategist, and her passion is marketing! She is a certified marketing facilitator with more than 20 years of marketing experience for media companies such as Clear Channel, Cox Radio, Beasley Broadcasting, and AOL. Her work brings new life to her client’s marketing efforts and results in revenue growth. Tanya loves networking and is a member of several organizations. She is the Board Chair for the South Tampa Chamber of Commerce and a Board member for Dress for Success Tampa Bay and FBI Tampa Citizen's Academy. Main quote: "Our organization fell prey to what many organizations do when you're going about the business of the organization: looking at what's urgent and what's important. Succession planning, I can't underline enough as important. Make sure you carve out time for that very important activity of succession planning, because if you don’t, there may become a time when it becomes not only urgent, but a crisis." ‌Additional Quotes: "One of the best gifts you gave us was the organizational assessment. Something we had not done as a board, something we had not done as an organization. It is a foundation, we'll continue to build on for years to come. That is invaluable." "I always believe change and transition will lead to positive growth. No matter where you're starting, I believe when you bring in new individuals, new mindsets, new exposure to things, you're going to get better because you're not starting from ground zero." ~ Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/35196570

70: Dr. Jaiya John on Leaving Well and Storytelling as a Garden During Transitions 02/03/2025

70: Dr. Jaiya John on Leaving Well and Storytelling as a Garden During Transitions Dr. Jaiya John was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized freedom worker, poet, author, teacher, and speaker. Jaiya is the founder of Soul Water Rising, a global rehumanizing mission to eradicate oppression. The mission has donated thousands of Jaiya’s books in support of social healing, and offers grants to displaced and vulnerable youth. He is the author of numerous books, including Daughter Drink This Water, We Birth Freedom at Dawn, Fragrance After Rain, and Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution. Jaiya writes, narrates, and produces the podcast, I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John, and is the founder of The Gathering, a global initiative and tour reviving traditional gathering and storytelling practices to fertilize social healing and liberation. He is a former professor of social psychology at Howard University, and has spoken to over a million people worldwide and audiences as large as several thousand. Jaiya holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on intergroup and race relations. As an undergraduate, he attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he studied Tibetan Holistic Medicine through independent research with Tibetan doctors and trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace. Main quote: “You cannot calendar well being. You cannot calendar healing in a workplace. Accountability speaks to the idea that if I'm not breathing, I'm dying. Consistent investment in healing and well being and growth in your organization day to day, not calendared because that says that it's not actually a priority. If it were a priority, it wouldn't be on a calendar. If staff appreciation were a priority, you wouldn't have one staff appreciation day a year.” Additional quotes: “Storytelling for us is a way of breathing, meaning that on the inhale we draw in the sediment, the nutrient of meaning from the world around us, from the people in our lives, we're drawing in meaning which orients us to the moment, this is the meaning of this moment.” “You can walk into a workplace in the morning and feel the mood of the day.” “The storytelling that says the way we treat each other in our staff meeting is intimately tied to how we are going to treat each other in the hallways, and in the break room, in the cafeteria, at our desks, in our offices, and how we treat each other via email communications and phone calls and how we treat our clients, how we treat the community.” “Change and transition is, of course, the nature of life. It's happening in every moment. The question is how do we relate to it?” To connect with Dr. Jaiya: Also mentioned: Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/35086310

69: Stephen Newland on the Intersection of Finance and Nonprofit Work 01/27/2025

68: Amanda Misiko Andere on Knowing When it’s Time to Leave and Leaving Well 01/20/2025

68: Amanda Misiko Andere on Knowing When it’s Time to Leave and Leaving Well Amanda Misiko Andere leads with love and disruption. She has spent over twenty years working in the nonprofit and public sector as a leader committed to racial and housing justice through advocacy for systemic change. Prior to joining Funders Together to End Homelessness as their CEO, she served as the CEO of Wider Opportunities for Women, a national advocacy organization. Currently, she serves as board chair of the United Philanthropy Forum and board member of Equity in the Center, Bainum Family Foundation, Philanthropy DMV, and Leadership Fairfax. Amanda is a founding member and on the leadership team for the National Racial Equity Working Group on Homelessness and Housing and the National Coalition for Housing Justice. She also serves on the Leadership Council for the DC Partnership to End Homelessness and is a volunteer advisor for Fairfax County on their racial equity task force. Previously she served as an adjunct professor at George Mason University teaching Nonprofit Management, Executive Director of FACETS, and Vice President of Cornerstones; who have similar missions of preventing and ending homelessness and breaking the cycle of poverty. Main quote: There can be comfort with change and transition because you discover things about yourself, your body, the people around you. It is truly the life learning mechanism to get you to a place of truer self to get us to justice and liberation. ‌Additional Quotes: My purpose wasn't necessarily to lead the organization into its next iteration. I was very clear that my purpose was to lead a search and a process that was equitable and just and full of love and disruption. And to set things in place for this black woman leader to not only be successful and impactful, but transformational. Leaving well means being absolutely aware of who you are in the moment and where you need to be and not be, and how to affect change for justice and liberation in a way that's uniquely given to you by whoever you believe in, God, world, the universe. Learn more about To connect with Amanda: ~ Take the To learn more about This podcast is produced by /episode/index/show/d36effe5-3e1f-4d01-bee8-1be6bac59344/id/34896500

Leaving Well: nonprofit leadership guidance for workplace exits and transitions

TOPICS