Professional Development OST Community Coordinator
Cambridge Agenda for Children Out-of-School-Time
Lincoln, VT
Highlight any employment, volunteer, or other experience relevant to NAA's mission, vision, values, core competencies, and strategic focus areas.
I held the position of CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York City (GSGNY) for almost 7 years. In that position we served 30,000 girls, ages K-12, with the support of 8,500 adult volunteers. Girl Scouts is the largest girl-serving afterschool program in the world. My position required that I engage directly with the girls and volunteers within New York City, and support the development and skill of both. Learning, innovating, changing what needs to be changed that leads to better outcomes for all, especially those living at the margins of our country, is core to who I am as a mother, professional, and changemaker. At GSGNY, I was able to really able to engage with all these aspects of myself.
More than the majority of the girls and families served came from low socio-economic communities, and working in New York City allowed me to continue my commitment to advancing the human rights of marginalized communities, to find ways to uplift their learning and capacity building, and use my voice to create spaces where the diversity of the human race could come together based upon shared values to create a better society and world. This is my default approach and is reflected in positions prior to GSGNY.
I joined the Agenda for Children OST (AFCOST) in Cambridge and took the position I currently occupy on a part-time basis solely because of the Agenda's mission and values, which I made clear in the interview process and because of the deeply committed individuals who were on the AFCOST team. My default approach in my work continues in the view I bring to our work, the new professional development I seek to create, and the elevation of the voices and contributions to the field of Black and brown, differently-gendered, differently-abled staff within the Cambridge afterschool community.
Over the last year, in my consulting practice, I've volunteered with spiritual organizations which have been focused on creating healing spaces to support individuals and communities in getting to the other side of the global syndemic (multiple global pandemics of Covid-19, racism, and economic distress).
Based on your skills, dispositions, and expertise, explain how you see yourself contributing to NAA's strategic focus areas: Field Leadership, Professional Development, Advocacy, Community Building.
Field Leadership & Community Engagement - I held the position of CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York City for almost 7 years. In that position we served 30,000 girls, ages K-12, with the support of 8,500 adult volunteers. My position required that I engage directly with the girls and volunteers within New York City, and support the development of both. New York City was and I believe continues to be one of the most diverse and progressive councils in all of the national Girl Scouts.
I advocated and secured funding for a Girl Leadership Program, that was funded with grants/donations of $250,000/year, and that program continues today. Another example my team and I advocated for taking Girl Scouts to girls living in homeless shelters, which we named Troop 6000. We secured approximately $1 million of start up funding for a program my successor. This represented the Council's first funding collaboration between/among the Mayor's Office, the City's Department of Human Services, and private donors. The innovative nature of this program garnered NY Times front page coverage, and subsequently after I left, a book has been published.
Professional Development: As a former Human Resources executive at the Ford Foundation, Care USA, a healthcare organization, and consultant, and as a Girl Scout CEO and now in my current position, I have centered the development of people as the greatest resource of any organization. The strategic plans I have contributed to in these organizations and in my consulting practice (www.miralitegroup.com) integrally link the quality of human resources (achieved through hiring, professional development and career progress) with strategic outcomes.
Most recently, I learned about NAA's Leadership Program for afterschool professionals and encouraged and supported the application of Lissette Castillo who was accepted into the 2019-20 class. Ms. Castillo has published an article in the digital version of NAA's magazine, and I felt privileged to be asked to review her final submission.
I have just conceived and launched through two new leadership programs in the City of engagement: changemakers: Youth Advocacy Leadership (building skills in our Frontline staff to grow their capacity to advocate for themselves and to train youth they work with in advocating around their own learning); and Liberation of Leadership (focused on breaking free of outworn forms of leadership that will impede reimagining and innovating in building a new future for ourselves, youth and families). Both of these new programs are focused on preparing our afterschool staff to be in the vanguard of supporting our youth, families, and afterschool programs in moving through and out of the disturbingly detrimental and destructive syndemic that has paralyzed the US and countries around the world
Advocacy: As CEO and a Human Resources executive, I have contributed to and led advocacy initiatives core to the missions of the organizations where I was called upon to do this. Most of my advocacy has been in the areas of creating equity, diversity and inclusion, the development of human potential, and servant (principle-centered) leadership internally to organizations, and externally in the work of organizations within communities or with families as to who and how marginalized individuals are included in the decisions & processes that affect them.
Review the NAA Board Job Description. Using the job description as a guide, describe your experience, skills, and dispositions that prepare you to be an effective board member of a national professional association.
I am an Executive member of the National AfterSchool Association, and above I have described why I believe my values and life's approach are in harmony with NAA.
As the CEO of GSGNY for almost 7 years (as I have described above), I reported to and worked with a 34-member Board of directors and was an ex-officio of all of the Board's committees. I regularly reported to the Board's executive committee and worked in partnership with the Board chair. I was intimately involved in Board recruitment, soliciting Board members for board gifts to achieve 100% Board giving, and I was the "public face" of the Board and the organization.
When hired as CEO of GSGNY, I had to lead the organization through a financial defalcation by its former treasurer. This required dealing with media, Board and staff demoralization, overhauling financial systems, and restoring the faith in the organization with donors, families, staff and the Board. While this took nearly four years of hard work, the council received a four-star rating from GuideStar before I stepped down. This rating and the innovative programs we were introducing at the Council enabled me to partner with a Board member to secure the council's first-ever 7-figure gift in 2017 to support its new programs.
I have done a considerable amount of public speaking at major fundraising gatherings of up to 700 people, and I delivered remarks on the importance of fundraising before an audience of 15,000 adults and girls at the 100th Anniversary national Girl Scouts convention in 2013. I've appeared on local and regional media programs with girls in our programs to advocate for investment in them, the afterschool programs, and eradicating the limiting views about possible futures for Black and brown girls. Some of the videos remain on YouTube of speeches that I delivered. Here is a sample of a media interview. This interview was key to securing a meeting with a donor, who was cultivated over a few years and resulted in the first 7-figure gift GSGNY had received.
As a lawyer and executive, I have worked with officials at all levels of government, both within the U.S., and in my role of opening and closing offices, delivering professional development, hiring international staff and complying with foreign labor laws, or working with program staff in my travels/work in 26 countries (most of which were developing countries).
Why are you interested in being a member of the NAA Board of Directors?
I joined NAA because I deeply appreciate its deep commitment to the elevation of the quality of afterschool professionals, which ultimately, will elevate the value of the afterschool experience for young people. As I share above, I philosophically see a direct connection/correlation between the quality/commitment of the human resources and the positive impact and outcomes of a field or organization. I have worked with other afterschool programs but have not seen the level of commitment or alignment of resources around professional development as I see in NAA. As a board member, I want to continue to support the professionalization of the field to move in a direction that erases the perceived difference in value and quality of the learning delivered by afterschool professionals and public/private school K-12 certified teachers.
