How We Got Here

In 2011, the earth beneath our feet shifted at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. After serving more than fifteen years, our Executive Director was terminated by the Board for inappropriate use of funds. Every nonprofit’s nightmare. The media got hold of the story, both the NYS Attorney General’s Office and the Manhattan District Attorney showed up with large guns and big subpoenas. The ED’s office was cleared out, and as a member of senior management it was my job to make sure staff felt safe and secure. I did my best. Not quite enough, I acknowledge. The organization could have gone under at any time, as we hustled to convince our Foundation Supporters and Major Donors order had been restored. Right about this time I was promoted to Interim Executive Director and simultaneously named the first grand jury witness in the case.

What was there to do? Women across the country were depending on us. We pulled ourselves together, cried a little (I lie, we cried a lot) and got to work rebuilding the organization. Media interviews were brutal, calls to longtime supporters pained. Some staff resigned. No one could blame them. That summer we didn’t know from week to week if we would make payroll. But we became a force to be reconned with. The board stood tall for the staff, and the staff held together in the name of abortion rights. We were in the fox pit for eight months together, and slowly the fog began to lift. Ten months after the scandal began, a new Executive Director was hired, I was named her Chief Operating Officer - and the real work began. I was given the responsibility of rebuilding our infrastructure and both drafting and implementing a financial handbook to ensure we were operating with full integrity. We hired new accountants and auditors. Our work took on greater and greater significance, and I’m proud to say we became a stronger, larger, more influential nonprofit than we had ever been before. We learned, we synthesized, and we became a team. The most difficult and challenging time of my professional career, I grew as a team player, a leader and human being in ways I never would have anticipated. Within three years we had outgrown our space, and I led the task of finding us a new home. A new beginning.

As anyone who has ever led a nonprofit knows, the fun never ends. Never. That same year, we began an equity & inclusion process that was one of the most transformational experiences of my life. Serving as the liaison to our consultants, staff and board, the process was challenging, traumatic, disillusioning and, ultimately, illuminating. It became clear that if meaningful equity & inclusion was to become a permanent part of the organization, someone on senior management needed to step down so that a person of color could rise up. After 18 years, I tendered my resignation in the fall of 2018. Let’s be honest, I was ready.