Leaving Well: nonprofit leadership guidance for workplace exits and transitions

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. Get the article --- 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. Get the article --- 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.

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 ----- 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.

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 ----- 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.

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.

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 .

Laura Gouin is a director, writer, and actress who got tired of starving and essentially created the company she wishes would have been around when she was starting out. She loves leveraging her experience in theater and film casting to custom match clients with their most ideal support, drawn from the creative arts. These Artful Admins are taken through her systematic training program, founded on principles of teaching learned from her MA in education. In addition to her creative background, she has worked professionally in team augmentation, sales, business development and operational management. Her unique approach to hiring, training, and team building has served organizations for over two decades by placing hires that stick long-term, and fostering teams that thrive. Satiated Artists LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Surgeon's Short Quotes: "The cycle of rebirth, renewal, it's pretty standard for artists, that creation cycle. Sometimes things have to end for something new to begin, to create that space for that. When artists come into satiated artists for employment, that doesn't have to end. That creative cycle continues because our clients are patrons of the arts. They know that who they're hiring are artists. They are energized by getting that creative mind on staff." "We don't connect with anybody if we don't know how to tell a good story. And I think that's where artists really excel. We understand that there's a narrative. We're all meaning making machines. Together collectively, let's make the best meaning we can." 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 .

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

An award-winning expert on organizational storytelling, Thaler Pekar works with visionary leaders to build and sustain cultures of excellent communication – cultures in which people can effectively speak and listen to each other, and to their audiences. For 20 years, she and her team at Thaler Pekar & Partners have advised leaders on strengthening trust, alignment, and influence through speaking, listening, narrative, and story. Working across sectors, Thaler delivers her four trademarked communication processes; produces multiplatform media; and develops oral histories and story collections. Recognized by both the BBC and the Smithsonian Institution as one of the world's leading experts in applied narrative, Thaler has delivered keynote speeches on five continents to thousands of people. Her influential work on the ethics of working with story, participatory narrative, story elicitation, and persuasive communication is featured in seven books. DOCUMENTARY: Lifting Up What Works®️: An Oral History of the First 22 Years of PolicyLink documentary BOOK: Lifting Up What Works®️: An Oral history of the First 22 Years of PolicyLink The Atlantic Philanthropies communications compilation of oral histories Thaler Pekar & Partners' Narrative Garden® "What Will Replace the Hero's Journey? " - SSIR essay Quotes: "Things are constantly shifting our perspective, our wisdom's growing, and ideally the stories are polyphonic." "A great leader, a great communicator, can tell a story that connects the past, the present and the future, and creates spaciousness for what comes next. It's sensical. Great storytelling is placemaking, meaning making, sensemaking, and it invites people to see themselves in the future that's being created." "I don't think of legacy as what's left behind. I think of it as what is carried forward." "One thing about legacy is the danger of a hero narrative and just shining the light on one person, when there are other people in the shadows. And in fact, you're creating those shadows if you're shining the light just on one person." To learn more about Leaving Well, visit 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 .

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have choreography for the kick line—but not for the goodbye. In this episode, Naomi unpacks the Netflix docuseries and explores what it reveals about leadership transitions, legacy traps, and the danger of having no plan for "what's next." Whether you're leading a nonprofit or sitting on a board, you need to hear this breakdown. Learn about: Why "churn" is not the same as "transition" How legacy leaders without a succession plan risk collapse What it means to evaluate performance without care And how Leaving Well can help your organization do it differently Because glitter doesn't cover grief, and turnover without care is just change in sequins. If you're a nonprofit leader or board member, this is your call to rethink succession before it becomes a crisis. Quotes: "The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders don't reckon with the human cost of shaping the team through extraction. Culture is constantly shifting and shaping the team dynamics every time someone leaves, even if it was the right decision." "The Leaving Well framework, the work that I do with nonprofits, asks, 'What does it look like if we offboard with grace, transparency, and care?' That question doesn't exist in the cheerleading and sports model, but it could." "Legacy without a succession plan is honestly nothing at all. It's not a true legacy." "My sweet spot is helping organizations name the unnameable and the scary stuff about departures before it explodes into narrative chaos." 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 .

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