Updates from ELP Staff and Board
Posted January 5, 2023 (from a message to the ELP community)
Happy New Year! I am writing on behalf of the ELP Board of Directors to ask for our community’s help in helping ELP identify two amazing leaders in the first quarter of this year. We have two positions open that will be critical to the future of ELP: Executive Director and Director of People & Operations. Both of these roles will work directly with our current amazing staff, and will have the opportunity to shape the culture and systems that align with ELP’s mission and bring our beloved organization into its next evolution.
I want to ask all our fellows to think about who in their network might be a strong candidate for either role. With regard to the Executive Director, we are looking for someone who is excited to partner with ELP staff to build the future of the organization, living deeply into our values and thinking about how we can continue to serve our community at the highest level. We're looking for someone who will bring creativity, deep listening, and great facilitation to our small but powerful team.
We want that Executive Director to have a partner in a Director of People & Operations that will be passionate about the systems and support that will maximize the impact of our work and will implement transparent financial structures, thoughtful HR policies, and be accountable for a thriving workplace culture.
Both positions are listed on the ELP website right now (elpnet.org/about/work-with-us), PLEASE take a moment to review them and share them with your networks and encourage folks to apply. We are being supported in this executive search Nonprofit HR – if you would like more information about the position or would like to suggest we reach out directly to a potential candidate, please contact Salima Mooljii at smooljii@nonprofithr.com.
With all my best wishes,
Mary Nemerov, Board Chair
Posted October, 2022
We are in the process of developing the position description and finalizing a hiring timeline for the position of Executive Director at ELP. ELP's Board and staff are working together in this process, and we all agree that we are seeking a leader who is dedicated to supporting a strong culture of shared leadership within the organization. During this transition, many staff members have taken on a number of additional responsibilities to support the smooth functioning of our programs and the continued operations of the organization. Board members have also assumed some tasks and duties to help carry this work. Through the dedicated efforts of many people, we are continuing to navigate this time with a perspective of deepening growth, learning, and evolution.
During this transition, ELP board and staff have committed to a process grounded in our recognition that in order to support leadership towards a just, sustainable future, it is critical that ELP evolves along with the culture and context in which we work. We have chosen to actively and purposefully engage in transition towards deeper growth in meeting our mission, anchored in values shared across all staff and board members and applied throughout our work. We recognize the need to assess where we still maintain dominant-culture patterns of operation, and make shifts to equity-centered practices. Through a long-term facilitated process of strategic planning, begun in mid-2021, ELP’s staff and board are actively engaged in a profound examination of our internal structures, systems, and ways of working. Earlier this year, we identified that a critical step is to collectively review and co-define the core values that guide us at all levels of our work as we evolve to meet the present needs of our communities in an era of rapid change. This shared work of board and staff is being facilitated by a trusted and experienced consultant, and we are moving towards a "working draft" of the values we wish to hold collectively during this time.
Posted July, 2022
We're happy to announce that Anna L. Waring (she/her) has joined our team as Interim Executive Director. She will be supporting ELP's staff and board during the transition, including organizational operations and ongoing change management. We are working to schedule some all-community calls later in the summer and fall to offer a chance to meet Anna in person (or, at least, in Zoomland) and hear more about our process for the leadership transition.
Read more about Anna on our staff page, and stay tuned for more updates.
Posted June 14, 2022
An important update regarding ELP’s Core Fellowship programs:
ELP is going through a time of deep transition. With the departure of our Executive Director and numerous staff transitions, it’s become increasingly clear that we do not have the capacity to maintain Core Fellowship Programs as planned this year. Additionally, in recent months, our staff, fellows and facilitators have challenged us to dig deeper in our exploration of leadership. With the many ways that people’s lives have been shifting in the last 2.5 years, our curriculum and staff must be ready to respond to these changes in meaningful ways. It’s very important to us that we give our fellows a high quality experience– which to us means a program that is intentional, relevant, and responsive to the needs of our participants both in terms of content and in community building.
We have also found ourselves working with a sense of urgency and pressure in responding to all these changes, and we hear similar themes of urgency, exhaustion, and burnout from all of you in our community. This is understandable given our times! As always, our team wants to respond to our community with programs that meet what you need. And this means that for now, as we move through this stage of transition, we need to take time to reflect, plan and prepare, and staff up as we build out the next iteration of our programs.
In collaboration with the ELP Board of Directors, we have made the decision to pause our remaining 2022 Fellowship programs that have not begun, in order to focus our capacity on honoring commitments to those programs already underway, and towards rebuilding our team. We are actively in the process of laying out our plans and timelines for returning to a full slate of programs. We will keep you informed along the way!
Posted June 8, 2022
Like a lot of organizations, the conditions of the past 2 years have called ELP’s team into reflection about our work in the world and about the ways we do that work. This has been a time of huge transition and adaptation, and as an organization we’re still very much in that place.
We hold ourselves accountable to our communities— our ELP Fellows, DDCSP Alums, RAY Fellows, and our partners and supporters. In that spirit we want to openly share some information about our ongoing organizational evolution. This page will be our main forum to provide updates throughout the coming months.
In May 2022, after 16 years of service to the organization, it was announced that Errol will be transitioning out of his role as Executive Director. ELP’s Board and staff team are working together, along with Errol as Senior Adviser to the organization, to ensure that this transition is as smooth as possible.
ELP is currently in the process of identifying interim leadership for the organization, and in the meantime we have provisional systems in place to ensure that we are making decisions to center and serve our program participants and partners. Change can be hard and uncomfortable, and there remain a number of questions to be answered. But we truly believe that through this transition —with support from our communities— ELP will be able to deepen into our vision and values in a way that helps us emerge stronger than ever.
If you have any questions about the process, please feel free to reach out to one of the staff members on our transition task force: Juan Lazo Bautista (juan@elpnet.org), Sydney Fuller (sydney@elpnet.org), or A'Nova Ettien (anova@elpnet.org). If you would prefer to communicate with a board member, any of these folks can put you in touch with one of the board members on our task force!
We look forward to sharing more about our process in the weeks ahead.