Nonprofit Lowdown

Daniel Oscar: educator, nonprofit exec, marathoner.  Listen in to Daniel's gems of wisdom for staying the course in the nonprofit world.  Daniel helped Wendy Kopp build Teach for America and has been in various roles in the nonprofit/education reform sector since then.  He shares his tips on how to run the marathon and not the sprint, how to prioritize self-care and his best advice to young people starting out in nonprofit.  My favorite takeaway: focus on being helpful instead of being right. For more about Daniel and Center for Supportive Schools, check it out here.

Have you ever walked away from a hard conversation feeling like a bomb went off and you didn't take cover?  Join me and my friend and mentor Jen Mayer, Founder of Becoming Better Together to talk about how to have hard conversations with fierceness and kindness, how to learn how to know thyself and how to be in the world even when it's uncomfortable. Jen is the queen of resources and offers this resource as thought-starters and tools for fierce conversations.

Join me for a chat with master coach and my former Board Chair Ted Federici to discuss the common pitfalls of leaders and the mistakes they make.  The job that we have as leaders is daunting and we sometimes do ourselves a disservice by being our own worst enemies.  Learn how to tame the ego, build trust and have the meeting before the meeting.  Bonus: you'll learn some of my favorite "Federicisms" like: "Everyone caters to the craziest person in the room," or "It's just a fart in a windstorm." To learn more about Ted and his work, visit Ted at federicicoaching.com.

Happy Birthday to Nonprofit Lowdown!  Thanks, listeners, for hanging with me for a year.  It's been a blast and a JOURNEY! For today's pod, I'm reviewing three books that have really taken my game to the next level.  There's something for everyone.  For organizational design geeks, there's Brave New Work.  For productivity and people who just need to get to work, there's Free to Focus.  And for managers and leaders who want to give better feedback, there's The Feedback Fallacy: Why Feedback Rarely Does What It's Meant To and the companion book Nine Lies About Work. It's been an honor and pleasure to be in your earbuds this last year.  Let me know if there are topics you'd like for me to review and thank you for listening!

We're back with our resident Technologista Emily Hicks-Rotella!  In today's pod, we talking about our favorite tech tools, tips and books for how to wrangle our to-do lists, get to inbox zero and manage our focus.  Too much to do and not enough time?  Join the club.  This is a must-listen if you're trying to get to work and for tech to work for you, not against you.   Some of our favorite tools: Airtable Assistant.to Sanebox Slack Trello Boomerang Freedom Zapier Streak Notion Tettra Books we love: Getting Things Done (classic!) Free to Focus Atomic Habits

You know how there are people in your life who inspire you to level up your game?  Lisette Nieves is one of these people.  She's an educator, a do-er, a coach and an inspiration.  On today's pod we talk about the challenges of managing a board and staff and how to make people feel USEFUL is more important than making them feel happy.  We discuss the dangers of a bored board, why you need to challenge your assumptions about who you need on your board and the emotional labor of leadership. For more Lisette, check out her website here.

People: your biggest asset and perhaps your biggest pain point.  Join me on today's pod with organizational strategist, human capital and DEI expert Sydney Henriques-Payne to explore some of the obstacles and opportunities with your people.  How do you spark cultural change?  How do you bring on the right level of leader for the maturity of your organization?  How do you put DEI in the center of the work and work with people at different levels of "wokeness"?  Sydney is dropping knowledge bombs like it's her job.   Also, Nine Lies About Work is mentioned on the pod.

Humans.  So complicated, amirite? Today I'm talking with Laura Wolff at Ideas42 about the work they do with nonprofits to boost positive behavioral change.  Learn some quick tips and tricks about lowering friction to desired behaviors and how to make teenagers do things.  We discuss simple changes that make a big impact from increasing enrollment to Gifted and Talented programs to decreasing community college dropout rates. To access FREE workshops @Ideas42, click here. For access to resources we mention on the pod, click here.

This one is for all you Founders out there.  Join me as I chat with my friend and professional coach Paul Thallner as we talk about the pitfalls of leadership.  How does one go from a passionate person with a start-up to an effective organizational leader?  How do you use the power of story-telling and narrative to shape culture and why does being a leader just suck sometimes?  Join us for some empathetic, good sense with Paul.  For more info about Paul, check out his company High Peaks Group if you need some coaching to level up!

I don't think you're ready for this jelly.   Two of the fiercest Asian-American women I know are with me on today's pod and we're ready to torch the patriarchy. Join me and my buds Seisei and Cosmo as we discuss what it means to be an Asian-American in the social justice space, how we can use our own privilege in service to others and why the Harvard lawsuit is a wedge issue.  Also, for those of you who want to negotiate a raise for yourself, call Seisei. Click here to get in touch with these badasses. Seisei & Cosmo #rockthecasbah.