Leaving Well: nonprofit leadership guidance for workplace exits and transitions – Details, episodes & analysis

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:

Brooke Richie-Babbage

LinkedIn

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Shannon Curtis has been a recording artist and songwriter for the last 27 years, and has carved out a unique, community-driven DIY music career with her husband and co-conspirator, Jamie Hill, for the last 19. Her new album — 80s kids, her first-ever covers album — is due out in April 2025, and was a great excuse for her to (re)acquire an Atari 2600. She lives in Tacoma, Washington, and is in love with The Mountain, just like any good inhabitant of the Puget Sound.

“When we were forced to pause, it was an opportunity to realize that maybe we had pushed and pulled and prodded and explored every corner that we could creatively in that medium in that setting.”

“I recognize that presence needs to be my goal. The idea of what is before me today to do. I don't need to take on all of the things all of the time. That's been something that I've really needed to focus on.”

“One of the most powerful tools that we can use to exist and resist, is to hold onto our joy. Our joy really is a refuge and when we create experiences of joy with each other, we create a place of safety for people who are feeling threatened.”

“Leaving well is being able to have the knowledge that I showed up before the leaving, that I showed up to the work, that I showed up to that part of my life with all of me in the best way that I could.”

To connect with Shannon:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Threads

Mastodon

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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:

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Instagram

YouTube

Books

Also mentioned: Podcast episode with J.S. Park

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Over the past 15 years, Stephen Newland has worked in finance roles at a variety of organizations including nonprofits, startups, early-stage companies, and Fortune 500. Stephen believes in making finance simple & actionable!

When he’s not heads down in a spreadsheet, he loves to spend time with his wife and daughter at a local coffee shop or watching his favorite Cincinnati sports teams!

Connect with Stephen:

Nonprofit discount list

Website

LinkedIn

Main Quote:

Once we've got good financial information, how do we turn it into very simple and actionable insights to drive the organization forward? The foundation of that is a forecast. I'm such a believer in it because I have seen it do wonders for organizations.

Additional Quotes: 

The absolute best finance people are essentially the Rosetta Stone for financial statements and they can take the financial statements and create a story with it and say, ‘here's what the organization is doing.’

Leaving well is providing the space for whoever comes behind me or behind you to step in and have the freedom and flexibility to put their spin on the organization.

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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 Funders Together

To connect with Amanda:

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Lacey Kempinski is a former in-house fundraiser, turned Mom, turned consultant. After more than a decade of in-house fundraising, Motherhood changed the trajectory of Lacey’s career. In 2018, when she was due back to work after her second parental leave, Lacey took a leap and founded Balanced Good. 

She’s on a mission to better support parents and organizations in the non-profit sector. Balanced Good provides parental leave coverage – from the day-to-day hands-on work to big picture transition planning – Balanced Good believes that a supported transition to parenthood will benefit both our sector and the parents working in it.

Lacey has a bold vision that all parental leaves are viewed as a celebrated life milestone and not a feared employment gap. 

She loves continuing to immerse herself in all things fundraising. While also balancing that with LEGO building, endless folding of laundry, and a love for hiking, canoeing, and all things outdoors. 

Main quote:

Leaving well to me is thoughtful. It's intentional. And it's critical for the missions that we serve to continue to grow, make impact, and create the change we want to see in our sector and the world. 

‌Additional Quotes:

As an employer, just asking, how can I support you? What can we push forward? And how can we fill your role and get things done while you are focused on your number one priority. Isn't that powerful? How good would it feel if somebody asked you that when you were navigating these hard, hard pieces in life?

Our program goes through what needs to be done. Who is going to do it? What should be prioritized? What can be given grace and extended timelines? How can we push forward mission critical work and de-prioritize non critical work? And then how can we do all of these things thoughtfully to ensure that employees, not just the employee going on leave, but employees all around are satisfied? That’s good staff retention. And we're being thoughtful about the humans that work in our sector.

To connect with Lacey visit the Balanced Good website.

LinkedIn: Lacey Kempinski

LinkedIn: Balanced Good

Instagram

Whether you are preparing for your own parental leave or a team member's, this handy workbook will help you walk through the steps to create a solid plan for the next! Parental Leave Planning Workbook

US Surgeon General's announcement: Mental Health and Wellbeing of Working Parents

Parental Leave in a Day Program: Helping employers and employees make a thoughtful plan as the navigate preparing for parental leave. 

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Take the Transition Readiness assessment

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Camille E. Acey is a mom, a community organizer, a former tech support leader, and founder of the conscious nonprofit closures consultancy The Wind Down. As part of this work, she currently facilitates the Practices of Composting and Hospicing community under the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Emerging Futures initiative. She was a co-founder of the Collective for Liberation, Ecology, and Technology (CoLET), a radical feminist tech collective. She also  served as an advisor to The Ada Initiative, an advocacy group for women in open tech/culture, and was board chair for Whose Knowledge?, a global feminist NGO focused on elevating marginalized voices.

Main quote:

Any chance I get when I can leave something and just say I'm not going to take on this kind of stuff for a while, I think is also really good. Not having to jump into whatever is next. And a sense of pride and not much regret. Letting go of that kind of stuff. I've definitely stepped away from things and then been so impressed by what the people that come afterwards have done, things that would have never occurred to me.

‌Additional Quotes:

I would like people to begin with the end in mind. I think that's really critical. One of the things I'm trying to push forward is to get foundations thinking about this, fiscal sponsors thinking about this. As part of the work of the wind down, I offer a free hotline for anyone who's closing or in discernment around closing.

To connect with Camille:

Website

Newsletter

Blog Post: A Good Day To Die: Some Reasons To Call It Quits

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Kamilah specializes in interim solutions, serving as a successful interim executive to nonprofit organizations with budgets of $10+ million. She is a nonprofit executive consultant with two decades of experience in the areas of organizational and relationship effectiveness; change management; interim leadership solutions; and program design/project management, both domestically and internationally with NGOs and Foundations focused on advancing humanitarian and conservation/environmental efforts. She is currently Founder & CEO of Katalyst Consulting Group.

Her firm works selectively with nonprofit organizations who are serious about advancing equity. She also recently served in a senior leadership role with the Jane Goodall Institute where she led the U.S. operations of the organization’s global humanitarian program and led efforts to grow programmatic scale and impact with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion; identified and built partnerships to amplify underrepresented voices in the space of conservation and youth activism; diversified the funding portfolio; and provided strategic direction to a high-performing remote team. Kamilah has strategically and successfully managed within complex global organizations to repair and strengthen critical board, cross-department, and founder relationships and interests resulting in heightened trust, engagement, and collaboration.

Kamilah has successfully led and stabilized internal teams during several CEO and Executive Director transitions and is known for her innate ability to heal fractured teams and lead from a space of humanity. Specializing in supporting nonprofits and foundations, she also has experience working with and leading projects with DoSomething.org, New York Cares, National Urban Fellows, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce’s Southern California Leadership Network, Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Kamilah was a World Economic Forum US Stakeholder Council Member for the Trillion Tree Initiative, an NGO Representative to the United Nations, an NYU Public Service Leadership Fellow, a National Urban Fellow, and a National Wildlife Federation Leadership Fellow. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration (City University of New York, Baruch College) and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management (University of Maryland, College Park).

She is also a mother to two young children, a photographer and, through Katalyst, leads executive women’s leadership retreats and a nonprofit consulting mastermind community centering the needs of Black and other women of color.

Main quote:

I think the biggest soapbox that I'm on these days is understanding that we can operate outside of the ways we've done business and that it's okay, that it's fun. You get to be an innovator of creating this new pathway of working in this ecosystem that's outside of the way that we think it's supposed to be and that it's always been done.

‌Additional Quotes:

Find or build your community. I don't care who that is. I don't care if it's a handful of friends that are doing the same thing. I don't care if you're paying for a membership. I don't care if it's your church group. You need to have people around you that are going to be understanding of where you are, that are on the journey with you, that have been there and done that. That's make or break for the speed at which you can succeed in your consulting practice.

To connect with Kamilah: 

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Visit Katalyst Community

For a free trial to the Katalyst Community

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

After nearly fifteen years of fundraising for arts and education organizations, Katie Mendez launched Built to Raise in 2023, providing interim director of development and short-term fractional fundraising services specifically for small and mid-sized nonprofits. She is an artist on the side, loves to explore the world, and her favorite way to spend an afternoon is snuggling on the couch with a kid, a dog, and a cup of hot tea. 

Main Quote: With my work, I'm not there to form relationships with your donors. That's not my job. My job is to help sustain the operations, make sure things aren't falling through the cracks, make sure that the team that's there is connecting and talking to the right people and asking people for their support. But it's not about me connecting with donors.

Additional Quote: Leaving well looks like making sure that when you're gone, because eventually you will leave, eventually you will transition on to something else, that the mission is greater. And I think especially in nonprofit work. It's just really centering that idea.

To connect with Katie:

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Best place to find your next nonprofit partner

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

Kemi Ilesanmi is a cultural strategist, coach, and connector with over 25yrs of experience in the arts sector. She has been executive director at The Laundromat Project (The LP), and previously Creative Capital Foundation and Walker Art Center. A graduate of Smith College and NYU, she also serves on several boards and advisory councils. In December 2022, she “left well” after 10yrs at The LP and traveled the world for a year with her husband. Now back in Brooklyn, she sees the world with fresh eyes and renewed hope.

Main quote:

Leaving well means to me a sense of satisfaction, a sense of joy, a sense of doing one's best to leave in a state of respect and intention with the communities and people that you are involved with.

Additional Quotes:

I really wanted to expose [my team] to all of the parts of doing this work because I wanted to make excellent leaders of color for the field. And not just for my organization. My thinking around that was that I was feeding the field. I was strengthening the field by making them well rounded leaders at my organization.

Learning how to navigate our own emotions as well as the needs and demands outside of us was a big learning that we carry through. And was a really important muscle and skill set that we learned as an organization, because it always allowed us to say yes to other things.

To connect with Kemi:

Website

LinkedIn

The Art of Gathering

The Art World Podcast Episode

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To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley