Consulting, Coaching, and Interim Leadership that Gets Your Mission Moving

If someone hands you a financial statement and you cannot tell the difference between a healthy fund balance and a red flag, what do you do? Some people go quiet and rubber-stamp whatever is put in front of them. Others go the opposite direction.

A look at Hagitude, gendered ageism, and who still gets called wise There was a time — and it wasn't so long ago, depending on which culture and which century you're standing in — when a woman who had lived long enough to raise a family, bury a few people she loved, run a household or a village council or a healing practice, was the person you went to when you needed real judgment. She was the elder. The one who'd seen enough cycles to know which crisis was actually a crisis

Sometimes founders and long-tenured leaders want to stay for the wrong reasons: they don't know what to do next, they haven't planned for their retirement, their identity is with the organization, or they don't think the organization can survive without them.

I'm not here to argue that outside expertise is always theater. It genuinely isn't. And after years of watching organizations navigate this, I'd say there are some situations where the outside voice isn't just useful — it's the honest choice.

One of the most disorienting things about accumulating genuine expertise is that it can start to feel like a liability.

Writing this wasn't just an exercise in sharing wisdom — it was me working through my own reckoning out loud, because that's the only way I know how to do hard things.

If your organization is drafting a job description and reaches for "humble," pause and ask: what behavior are we actually trying to describe?

For nonprofit leaders, this mental exhaustion doesn't just happen at home. It's the fog that sets in by Wednesday afternoon, the reason you can't quite focus in that 4 p.m. meeting, and the invisible weight that makes even small choices feel overwhelming.

One of the most critical strategic decisions nonprofit leaders face is determining what type of board will best serve their organization. The answer isn't one-size-fits-all, and often, the most effective approach involves elements of multiple models.

As CEO, you become the default container for every emotional overflow in the organization.

Before You Start: Is a Nonprofit the Right Fit?

As nonprofit leaders, we regularly pour time and resources into planning retreats for our organizations, yet rarely give ourselves even a fraction of that time to reflect on our leadership.

Running a nonprofit is hard enough without tripping over preventable mistakes