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.

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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.

 

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.

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---

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.

 

Katya Fels Smyth is an advocate / activist for shifting power and perspective so we all have a fair shot at wellbeing. She is the founder and CEO of the Full Frame Initiative, now in its final stages of winddown after more than 15 years of national social change work; and is the founder and former Executive Director of On The Rise, a 30 year-old community of and by women who are unhoused and who have not found community or support in traditional social services.  She's a mom, spouse, and a person to almost 20 animals who share a 25 acre farm, where the people grow and sell artisanal garlic and the animals live the good life.   

Read Katya's essay

 

Find Katya:

Full Frame Initiative

LinkedIn

Medium

 

Steward the Forest, Not Save Every Tree

If We Care About Justice, We Must Care About Endings

 

Quotes:

"We never have control over things. But what we can do is pay a lot of attention to relationships and energy more than control what others are going to do moving forward."

 

"Whether you are an individual leaving a relationship, or a board deciding to close an organization, or a funder deciding to end a funding relationship, the decision to leave is an expression of power."

 

"We remember endings. We remember the high and the low of our experience, whether it's a surgery, hospitalization experience, or a work experience. And we remember how it felt when it ended."

 

"Your legacy is as much about how you left people feeling and doing and equipped, and did you respect them enough to not walk out on them if you had the opportunity to stay with them and hand things over to them."

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.   

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

Nani Jansen Reventlow is an international human rights lawyer. She is the founder of Systemic Justice, an organisation that advocates for marginalised communities across Europe through strategic litigation. Previously, she founded the Digital Freedom Fund. Nani is the author of the book Radical Justice, a collection of nine essays on how to build a better world, published in Dutch in 2024 with an English edition coming in March 2026.

Read Nani's essay

 

Find Nani:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

Radical Justice - book

 

Quotes:

"If you trust someone to build an organization, why wouldn't you trust them to also make sure that that work can continue without them?"

 

"I want to set up the organization for further success because I invested in building it. I want it to thrive as I leave. That means not only looking after my 'legacy', but also making sure that the incoming executive director is set up for success and that there's sufficient space for them."

 

"There's not going to be a successful leadership transition if we lose the team along the way. So making sure that there's someone who's looking out for everyone and for the people who are not making themselves heard. Change is uncomfortable for us humans. There needs to be someone who's mindful of the different feelings and dynamics that come up."

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

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:

Website

Merger Mondays case studies

LinkedIn - Kate Harris

LinkedIn - KHG Nonprofit Strategy    

Sustained Collab

 

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

Althea Seloover is a poet, a relational map-maker, a story teller, an advocate, an abolitionist, an investigator, an entrepreneur, a creative thinker, a hope holder, a griever, a dreamer, and a friend. She provides work in the realm of prisoner liberation, self-parenting & life history investigation work in the world. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her fiancé, two cats & lots of books. 

Find Althea:

Website

Instagram

For over 18 months, Althea has been passing the collection plate for a Palestinian family taking refuge in Cairo, Egypt. If you'd like to contribute to these monthly efforts, you can donate here.

 

Quotes:

When I make the decision to do things differently, whether that's by choice or the circumstances have changed, to stay with the humbling, and at times humiliating, learning process of 'I am out of my element, or I feel a little incompetent, or I don't know the answer right off the top of my head, or I don't know which direction to move in.' Really honoring those moments as opportunities to do exactly what I have had the joy and opportunity to do for others is important.

 

Grief creates anxiety. It creates these spaces, these little sinkholes, in the relational fabric of things.

 

The elements that nurture safety, in my experience, are a sense of agency, a sense of self and connection, an understanding of the environment, the connections between things.

 

The way that we're able to shift the way that our systems work, the way that we work, the way the norms of our culture is by doing what we believe should be happening. It's making small changes. It's embodying the values.

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

A CEO steps down after a viral scandal, and within 72 hours, a new interim leader is named. While the world focused on the drama, we're focusing on what really matters: how Astronomer's board pulled off one of the fastest leadership transitions we've seen. Nonprofit leaders: this is your wake-up call.

In this episode, Naomi breaks down:

• Why internal leadership benches matter more than dream candidate lists

• Why speed is more important than perfection during a crisis

• How to craft crisis communications that inspire confidence (not chaos)

• Why your mission must stay front and center, even in moments of disruption

Whether you're an Executive Director or on a nonprofit board, this is your playbook for succession readiness—before a crisis hits.

Quotes:

"Most nonprofit boards think that succession planning means having a dusty binder somewhere with outdated emergency contacts. But modern crises move at the speed of social media, not board meetings."

"So my question for you is: who is on your current team that could run your organization tomorrow? Not perfectly, not permanently, but competently enough to maintain operations while you figure out the long term. If your answer is nobody, then that's your first succession planning priority."

"You need to craft your messaging around leadership transition around these three points: number one, what happened? Keep it brief. Number two, what you're doing about it. Keep it concrete. And number three, how you're protecting the mission that's forward looking."

"In a world where crises moves at internet speed, your succession planning better be just as fast."

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

Lauren Andraski is a collaborative community builder who champions equitable communities in every area of her life - from launching a community of nonprofit consultants to starting a string quartet in her living room. As the founder of Consultants for Good, she has created a thriving network of over 1,100 nonprofit consultants across 6 continents.

 

Quotes:

"We've found that capacity building usually takes at least three years to actually give organizations time to implement and start seeing evidence of that impact. Setting the clear expectation that just because we don't see it right away doesn't mean that nothing's happening, and we should stay the course on the things we're trying to implement."

 

"Consultants aren't often cheap, but they're an incredible investment if you're clear on where you actually want to start."

 

"When you're hiring a consultant, one of the benefits is that the consultant is not already on your team. They're not part of the power dynamics. They are not part of the culture—in a really positive way. I think sometimes it feels like they'll never understand us. But in fact, that can be really helpful."

 

Find Lauren:

Consultants 4 Good 

(Join the community!)

C4G reports

LinkedIn

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

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:

House of E

Website

Instagram

YouTube

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

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:

Instagram

LinkedIn

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

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

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

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

~

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

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.

Article Link

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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.

 

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.  

Read the MM Lafleur piece

 

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:

Website

Twitter

Instagram

Linkedin

 

To connect with Casey:

Twitter

Instagram

LinkedIn

 

To connect with Julie

LinkedIn

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

It's time to reimagine workplace transitions and the way we say goodbye. Here's the truth: People Leave. We leave towns and cities, and we leave relationships. We leave projects, volunteer opportunities, and appointed and elected seats. People leave jobs too, whether high powered roles and barely paid gigs. 

Another truth is that organizations are exponentially terrible at preparing for and navigating workplace transitions.  The combination of people leaving and the reality that our workplaces are ill-equipped for those situations makes for perpetually bad exits. I've examined the way people leave, and through the Leaving Well framework, believe we can reimagine and create the art and practice of moving on from a place, thing, role, or job, with intention, purpose, and when possible – joy, and want to invite you into the conversation with this episode.

 

Main Quote: 

Leaving Well is not just about avoiding dreaded PR nightmares, scheduling exit interviews, or scrambling to toggle off access to email accounts. It's so much more than the departure itself.  It's about the way we handle transitions, how we prioritize people, and how we ensure the ongoing health of our organization in the face of inevitable change.

 

Additional Quotes:

Leaving Well benefits not only those departing, but also those staying behind. It mitigates the loss of productivity. It protects the bottom line of organizations and prevents knowledge attrition. It builds company loyalty and a positive workplace environment.

 

Creating a culture of leaving well does not sow seeds of restlessness.

To connect with Naomi:

Website

LinkedIn

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Take the Transition Readiness assessment

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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Ingrid facilitates smooth leadership transitions for nonprofit organizations. Ingrid has built a consulting practice that focuses on strengthening nonprofit leadership, especially during transitions.

Over the course of five interim executive director appointments, Ingrid has seen a variety of ways leaving well can be implemented. 

She also offers executive search services and guides organizations to develop comprehensive succession plans that promote leaving well.

Over the last twenty-five years, Ingrid has served in a wide variety of roles in nonprofit organizations. This includes eleven years as the executive director of a food system nonprofit, where she built the fledgling organization to be a community institution.

 

Main quote:

There's a lot of great work being done but people are burning out because they're doing too much. If we can get organizations to work together, they can cut down on some of that and really improve their efficiencies.

 

‌Additional Quotes:

Leaving well is really being intentional in how you go, and not burning bridges, not taking a lot of knowledge with you that other people don't have. But really intentionally transferring that knowledge, those relationships, so that that work can continue.

To connect with Ingrid:

Website

Facebook

Linkedin

Learn more about the Interim Executive Academy

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

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:

LinkedIn

Wild Awake Creative

Delve for Good

~

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Melanie is a 3x former Chief of Staff passionate about the profession, spreading awareness on how impactful it is, and helping others get into this career path. She's also a mom who loves watching her son grow (a 6'4 high school freshman - lots of growing going on). Her favorite way to spend an afternoon is reading a good book, when she has the time to do so. 

 

Main quote:

We're not just problem solvers, we're problem seekers. So we say 'what are the roadblocks coming up?' What are the risks that we might be running into? What are the gaps that we need to fill, what bridges are we going to cross in the future?' So the Chief of Staff seeks that out and then puts together a strategic plan for it. We're a blend of the strategic and the execution.

 

‌Additional Quotes:

Chiefs of staff come in and create processes, they improve procedures, create and implement policies, and then hand the work off to other people.

 

Having a strong Chief of Staff who can be the home base, helping with decision making, making sure all the projects are running on track and getting you out of the weeds means then you can use your bandwidth to really shine.

 

To register for the free Chief of Staff masterclass

To check out the Chief of Staff training (with a special discount for podcast listeners!!): use code NAOMI for 24% off!

 

To connect with Melanie:

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

The Case for a Chief of Staff - Harvard Business Review

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Lisa Marshall is founder and principal of Good Work Consulting, where she helps for-purpose professionals get to the strategic part of their to-do list. 

She knows how it feels to be stuck fielding an endless list of to-dos that are urgent and important, but don't necessarily build capacity. And what it's like to daydream about the projects that would make things better (if there were only time to get to them).

She specializes in project management, implementation support, and data visualization and reporting. The work that energizes her the most is connecting people and tools, so that (work) life becomes just a little more manageable.

She lives in Dallas, TX with her husband and two dogs, Eleanor and Franklin.  

 

Main quote:

"If you can create an inflow of all of the tasks and all of the information that comes to you into the work management system that you're using, you will get so much more done. There will not be balls dropped. You'll be able to do more than you thought you could, and you'll be less stressed while you're doing it."

 

‌Additional Quotes:

"There's dashboards that nonprofits need and they fall into three buckets: executive, analytical, and public facing."

 

"For me, leaving well is about having a mindset or looking at things through the lens of what's the best that could happen? And that's for the person who's leaving. It's for the people who are staying. It's for the things that are yet to come. But what's the best that could happen?"

To connect with Lisa:

LinkedIn

Good Work Resources

Good Work Services

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

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: Amazon | Bookshop

The Memo: Amazon | Bookshop

Right Within: Amazon | Bookshop

You Are More Than Magic: Amazon | Bookshop

 

To connect with Minda:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

 

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 Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

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:

Website

Instagram

YouTube

Books

Also mentioned: Podcast episode with J.S. Park

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

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.

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Discover why staying on every hook diminishes your accountability to mission, and learn to audit your own indispensability before it becomes an organizational crisis.

Article Link

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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.

 

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:

X

Instagram

LinkedIn

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

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. 

 

~

 

Take the Transition Readiness assessment

To learn more about Leaving Well

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

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

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: 

LinkedIn

Visit Katalyst Community

For a free trial to the Katalyst Community

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

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:

Website

LinkedIn

Best place to find your next nonprofit partner

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

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

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Nonprofit leaders often have too much on their plates, and not enough time or capacity to effectively choose what task or projects are important vs. urgent vs. should be delegated. In this episode, I'm sharing the well-known concept of the Eisenhower Matrix and how it can be applied to workplace transitions. Listen in to learn how to identify which tasks associated with leaving can be postponed, prioritized as urgent, or left entirely for someone else to do.

 

To share your thoughts with me on this episode, please leave me an audio message on SpeakPipe! 

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Rita Sever has worked as an HR Director, and HR consultant and a trainer.  She has worked with social justice organizations throughout the country.  Rita has an MA in Organizational Psychology and is a certified professional coach.  Rita has taught "HR in a Nonprofit" to graduate students at University of San Francisco and Sonoma State University in California.  Rita has also written two books:  Supervision Matters and Leading for Justice.

Rita is a fan of Matt the Electrician (musician), loves a good book and her favorite way to spend an afternoon is playing a low-competition game with family and/or friends. 

 

Main quote: Tying the job responsibilities to the mission, vision, and values grounds the job description and helps people understand why it matters.

‌Additional Quote: Be as intentional as you can, as a whole organization, of enlivening your values to support the culture.

 

To purchase Rita's book, visit either Amazon or Bookshop.

To connect with Rita:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

~

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Sherrell Dorsey is an award-winning data journalist, entrepreneur, speaker, and author teaching the world to redefine who gets to create and participate in the future. She founded The Plug in 2016,  the first Black data-driven tech news publication to syndicate on the Bloomberg Terminal, which was acquired in 2023 by ImpactAlpha. 

As the TED Tech podcast host, Sherrell provides her in-depth analysis and commentary on technologies changing society, and how these advancements can provide opportunities for more underserved Americans to participate in an increasingly automated and digital world.

Her first book, Upper Hand: The Future of Work for the Rest of Us, published by Wiley in 2021, connects everyday people and communities to opportunities and resources to upskill or retrain for in-demand careers both present and future so that they do not get left behind in the sweeping changes technology is bringing across industries. 

She has graced the stages as a keynote speaker, host, and moderator at some of the leading companies in the world, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Accenture, Bloomreach, Cisco, and others. 

Her work has been featured in Vice, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, The Information, Columbia Journalism Review, and more. She earned her stripes working for companies like Uber and Google Fiber.  She holds a Master's degree in data journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in international trade and marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

 

Main quote:

I think once you start to not be as in love with the work, it's time. It's your own life telling you there's something else out there. You did a great thing and now you can transition out with dignity, with respect to your team and those who helped you build. I think once you start to get that inkling, you just can't ignore it. It taps on you over and over.

‌Additional Quotes:

I was brave and I didn't take any shit and I cried and I fought and I grew and I learned and I sacrificed. I had to become a very different person through this process and I'm grateful for it. But it wasn't always easy. It wasn't always kind, but it definitely refined me in many ways. 

 

To connect with Sherrell:

Website

Instagram

~

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Tatiana O'Hara is Team & Leadership Development Consultant that helps successful, yet overwhelmed online business owners create the structure needed for their team & daily operations, so they can focus on scaling sustainably. 

 

As a corporate leader turned business coach, she's helped dozens of leaders optimize and build their team, and learn essential leadership skills that have yielded hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales growth. Tatiana puts the focus on the things that matter most in our business- the people that run it!

 

Main quote:

If we have an efficient operation and a strong company culture, you're already opening yourself up to improve your capacity a lot without hiring more people. A lot of times we think we need more people to have more capacity, but sometimes more people can actually shrink your capacity because you're bringing more people into chaos.

 

‌Additional Quotes:

When you can build your own personal leadership and build that thought leadership within yourself, it allows you to show up as who you really are. And that's what we want to see. We want to see who you really are, not you fitting the mold of who you think you need to be.

 

Streamlined operations and strong company culture, those two things together is 100 percent the gateway to you being able to accomplish big things.

 

To connect with Tatiana:

Website

Instagram

To learn more about Grindaholics Rx

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

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.

 

Joan says: It often feels as if I've spent my career leaving positions, organizations, and their people. I love beginnings and the energy that comes with stepping into something new and that means that in some way, I love endings as well. With a whole passel of interim gigs under my belt, I now also work at helping others find and succeed in those roles through the Interim Executives Academy and it's been a good match. I'm an empty-nester and live and work in Fort Wayne, IN, where I share a house with T.S. Eliot, the cat, who, like me, enjoys nothing more than sitting in the sun. I read. He snores.

Main quote: When change has come to me because of others actions or changes beyond my control, that's where my lessons are. That's when I learn most deeply from the change. And I've learned to grieve if there's some grieving or sadness around change or transition. Then to find what's to celebrate about it.

‌Additional Quote: I may have to leave something, but I want to know how I can leave with the most grace and respect for what was, and value and treasure what was, and leave everybody in the best position to move forward from the change, not just me. I want to be a person that leaves well, but I also want to be a person that can be left well.

 

To connect with Joan:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Interim Executive Academy

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

To share your thoughts with me on this episode, please leave me an audio message on SpeakPipe! 

To listen to more episodes about values, check out episodes 18, 38, 40, 42 and 48!

~

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

 

Amy Freitag became president of The New York Community Trust in July 2022. For the prior eight years, she was executive director of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a 75-year-old family foundation based in New York City. During her tenure, she initiated the J.M.K. Innovation Prize and led grantmaking in criminal justice reform, climate change, democracy, and historical conservation, including several Civil Rights sites.

Freitag previously was executive director of the New York Restoration Project, which led a private effort to plant one million new trees in New York City. Prior to that, she was the U.S. program director for the World Monuments Fund and deputy commissioner for capital projects with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

She served on the NYC Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers and currently sits on the board of the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation.

Freitag was raised in Akron, Ohio, and holds an A.B. from Smith College and master's degrees in landscape architecture and historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Main quote: The best leaders I know always want the organization to thrive well past their ambition. The organization will go to new places, and we all have certain gifts that we bring to an organization, and no one person can lead an organization forever. It gets richer with different leadership.

 

‌Additional Quotes: If we don't listen and adjust, we may not be as effective as we want to be. It's super hard, and it sounds really basic, but I actually think listening is one of our biggest superpowers that we have to lean into to really maximize and optimize. 

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

N. Chloé Nwangwu, the brand scientist, is a speaker, behavioral strategist, and brand visibility expert. A former international conflict mediator, she is now the founder of NobiWorks, a brand visibility consultancy where she partners with underrecognized brands, leveraging science to ensure they are impossible to ignore. Her clients have included a number of boutique firms, the High Ambition Coalition, and the first refugee delegation to the UN.

 

Main quote:
"Your circle of recognition is just fancy talk for your network. But it is your network organized around a specific behavior, namely recognition. And ensuring that your circle of recognition is designed to amplify your ideas in the right kind of way, that's going to be the path forward."

‌

Additional Quotes: 

"Don't be content with disrupting the present. Focus on shaping the future."

"One of the most pernicious things that ideal client avatars do, and why I find them so dangerous, is that they segment us and our world into demographic, sometimes psychographic segments."

 

To connect with Chloé: 

Website

Nobi Works Linked

N. Chloé on LinkedIn

Instagram

 

~

 

To take the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz

To learn more about Leaving Well

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

To chat with me about bringing After Action Reviews to your nonprofit or social impact organization, contact me here.

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

Share YOUR strong opinion with me via an audio message on SpeakPipe! 

 

Resources shared in this episode:

Africa Brooke's book: Amazon | Bookshop

The Decelerator

The Wind Down

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.    

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

To share your thoughts with me on this episode, please leave me an audio message on SpeakPipe! 

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.    

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

Resources and articles mentioned in this episode:

Third Sector Academy

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

To share your thoughts with me on this episode, please leave me an audio message on SpeakPipe! 

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

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. 

Website

LinkedIn

Download a guide, listen to conversations, and access presentation slides

 

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 https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

Resources and articles mentioned in this episode:

• Jaiya John - Your Caring Heart - Amazon or Bookshop  

• Kim Scott - Radical Candor - Amazon or Bookshop 

• Rita Sever - Leading for Justice -  Amazon or Bookshop

• Values Exercise  / Breathing Space article

• Nicole Olive video

• Vu Le video

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

 

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

Resources and articles mentioned in this episode:

Your First Million Live

Your First Million Book:  Bookshop or Amazon

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee. 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

In this episode, I'm excited to talk in depth about the Workplace Transition Quiz and the four archetypes, and how knowing which one you are can help you improve your relationship with Leaving Well. If you're new here, Leaving Well is the art and practice of leaving a place, role, title, or thing with intention and purpose, and when possible … joy.

 

Resources and articles mentioned in this episode:

To take the quiz: https://www.naomihattaway.com/quiz

 

To save the Archetype Playlists:

Transition Trailblazer

Change Custodian

Steadfast Stabilizer

Change Champion

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

 

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.

 

To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/

 

To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.  

 

This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.