This is a “white water” time in health care. The historic Affordable Care Act is opening access to health insurance to our country’s most vulnerable people (except the undocumented), yet it’s also straining our already overwhelmed public health system. For Bay Area cancer service providers like the Women’s Cancer Resource Center (WCRC), where I serve as executive director, the layoffs and program closures resulting from the “Great Recession” and the exit of the American Cancer Society from direct service have brought additional, formidable gaps in fragile safety net services.
Posts Tagged "Leadership"
January 15, 2014
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January 8, 2014
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. They feel like a bit of a set up. However, several years ago my partner and I each resolved to fail spectacularly in at least one thing each year.
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October 16, 2013
I am very honored to work for Little Tokyo Service Center, a multi-purpose social service agency in downtown Los Angeles. My colleagues and I are like one big family and we are very supportive of one another. Hearing about office politics from my friends at other agencies, I feel I could not ask for a better place to work.
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October 11, 2013
In Part 1 of this 2-part series on nonprofit governance, Marla Cornelius wrote about the executive director’s role in governance. This week, in part two, she discusses the board’s role in this interdependent partnership. Marla is a Senior Project Director at CompassPoint and Board Chair at DataCenter: A Research Justice Organization.
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October 9, 2013
In this CompassPoints of View blog post, we talk with Senior Project Directors Michelle Gislason and Marissa Tirona about peer coaching circles: how peer coaching circles came to CompassPoint, how we use them in our work, what the future of peer coaching circles holds, and why we like them!
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September 26, 2013
In early September, I spent two rewarding days helping some of our sector’s most passionate leaders – those working to end violence against women and girls – to focus on their own self-care. I co-facilitated these self-care workshops with Norma Wong as part of the Move to End Violence (MEV) initiative.
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August 14, 2013
I often hear executives complain about their boards. Many of the comments sound like this:
- My board is disengaged. I understand that they are busy and I don’t want to ask for too much, but I can barely get them to come to meetings.
- My board doesn’t take responsibility for their own work. Why do I have to cajole them when they should be attending to their own affairs?
- My board doesn’t understand what our staff even does. They want to get involved in the day-to-day work and don’t see that they’re micromanaging.
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July 16, 2013
how can we build organizations that can turn on a dime? How can we build in our board cultures a reverence for power combined with dizzying control? These are the true moves needed to ensure meaningful systemic impact. And just to be crystal clear, when I say to my fellow nonprofits, “Be the cheetah,” I don’t mean be predatory but, rather, use your skills in surprising ways for far superior results. Work in ways that build your “flex” muscles.
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June 4, 2013
In this first of two blog posts on organizational strategy, CompassPoint Project Director Shannon Ellis considers the changing social and operational environment nonprofits are working in, and the shifts in orientation these changes necessitate. In Part 2, Shannon lays out how getting clear on strategy can help an organization move through turbulent waters.
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June 4, 2013
Last week, in “Think Like a Surfer: Part One of a Two-Part Series on Organizational Strategy,” Shannon Ellis wrote about the powerful and turbulent waters we’re navigating as nonprofits, and reflected on some of the leadership capacities it takes to harness that power to effect lasting change. This week, in Part Two, she discusses the five practices she sees in common among organizations that are successful in surfing through these changes.
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