Wait, let’s say it together. Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Uh Big nonprofit. Just 95%. Yeah. Do it together. Come on, go out and be great. Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of larynges frais if you obstructed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show sitting right next to me this week because her family is on vacation at my beach house. Is our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hi, Kate. Hi, Uncle Tony. It’s nice to be here. Well, I hope our listeners are hungry for empowering women. Jenny Mitchell’s new book, Embracing Ambition. Unites the leadership stories of 12 exceptional women CEO S. The result is a mentorship resource for the current and next generation of women leaders. She shares the challenges including perception, barriers, glass cliff assignments and collective vision. Jenny is chief visionary officer of Chander on Tony’s Take two. I feel bad for the Democrats were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun. Looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com. Here is empowering women. What a genuine pleasure to welcome Jenny Mitchell to nonprofit radio. She is the visionary. What a pleasure. Oh, I forgot to ask you. How do you pronounce the name of your company? Cavender? Like lavender. Cavender looks exactly as it sounds. It sounds exactly as it looks. Ok. What a pleasure. A genuine pleasure to welcome Jenny Mitchell to nonprofit radio. She is the chief visionary officer of Cavender where she works closely with leaders to change the world. One mission at a time. She’s a speaker, executive coach, fundraising, professional, and host of the underdog leadership podcast. Her book is embracing ambition, empowering women to step out, be seen and lead that important book. Brings her to nonprofit radio. You’ll find Jenny on linkedin and her company at cavender.com. Jenny Mitchell. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Woo hoo. I love the energy already. Thank you, Tony. Oh, my pleasure. I’m glad you’re excited already. Thank you. And congratulations on a book that I believe came out in March. That’s correct. It feels like uh my third baby. Are you doing lots of gigs? Are you speaking? Are you selling books? I’m doing it all. So um launched in March, did some Canadian launches we’re working on launches in New Jersey um for the fall. Um And I have another author that’s in Pennsylvania. So we’re on our way there. Not just Trump, that’s there. It’s me too. Um And you know, it’s been an interesting journey, seeing people experience the book, what the kind of feedback is, uh how the speaking engagements have kind of come out of that very briefly. My story is that I, I cut my teeth in fundraising just like you. And as I got going, I realized that the passion I had was for the people. I’m sure you can relate to that and specifically the op opportunity I could provide was women’s leadership. And so that’s kind of where I’ve doubled down in the not for profit space, although I am exploring corporate as well. All right, expanding ever challenging boundaries, one of the things we’ll talk about expanding boundaries, um Thank you for mentioning New Jersey, my hometown. Um And you’re coming to us from Ottawa. That’s correct, Ottawa. So think about going to Toronto and then going kind of east three hours. So the book is a collection of 12 authors. Yourself included essays. II, I deserve essays on, you know, you’re out to empower future and current female leaders. And there are lots of CEO S. Um They’re all CEO S eventually, are they all, do they all make CEO S or they’re all, they’re all CEO S and I might help you with like a sort of situating the why? Because like why another book? Right, Tony, I do to tell your story about the out of body experience that you had. That’s to me that’s what. But you please, it’s your, it’s your, it’s your story. Tell you a story to tell this story. No, no, I’m delighted to tell the story. Please tell your story. I’m delighted to tell the story because um I guess the the very brief of why this book, why another book? And who am I to be honest, who am I to bring another book into the world about this? And so this ties into my story. Um But when I realized that there were parts that we weren’t bringing of ourselves to leadership. And of course, my podcast is called underdog leadership. So obviously, I care deeply about those number twos becoming number ones. And I saw that there was this theme that we couldn’t really know people until we truly understood their leadership story journeys. And so with that lovely segue, you gave me, I will give you the set the stage for the my story, which is called um being Right? And I had this experience driving down a street where I realized in a moment that I was having a panic attack. And it was very interesting because my logical brain kept saying things like, well, if you’re gonna have a panic attack, it’s a bad idea to do it in a car, Tony. So you should pull over and banks are always reputable. So sh you should definitely sit in the front lobby of a bank. Like don’t go to the grocery store. There might not be seats. All of this is running in my head as you can imagine. It’s a ticker tape as I’m trying to figure out how to not pass out in the car. Um And the experience of that moment in my body forms a thread in my story, which I’m not gonna give away the ending. But it’s a realization of something about leadership that I’m trying to do that doesn’t fit. And I’m sure your listeners can relate to that. Uh Tell the, tell the story now about the, the out of body experience you had listening to one of your, one of your 12 authors uh talk about her research. Oh, at the beginning, yes. So yes, at the beginning. So I’m sitting in the audience of a very large international fundraising conference and I’m listening to this woman talk about her research. Uh Doctor Megan Ravine about women’s leadership experiences, which she was an expert in. She just finished her dissertation. She was sharing us those five pillars and the outer body experience was, oh I recognize that 10, I know that one too. Oh That one’s familiar to me. In other words, it was like she was talking to me and I almost had the experience of like, do I look like a she like I’m turning my head behind me thinking, oh my God, is everybody else experiencing the same way? Um And it really helps me understand that my, my experience was not my own. It was just mine. It was other people’s. And so I made a beeline to her because I’m that person and said we need to connect. And that was the beginning of a wonderful collaboration that we had together when I was reading, I was thinking of uh the Roberta Flack song Killing Me Softly, right? She the Rebecca was, was strumming her your life with her words. She wasn’t killing me softly with her song. But there was, you know, no, I’m not gonna sing. No, I know better. I know my boundaries. I know my boundaries. Um Anyway, I was thinking of Killing Me Softly by Roberta Flack. Uh OK. So you got, you got the women together for a weekend was the sort of the genesis of the, of each woman’s essay. What was that? What was that weekend? Like? Do you have a lot of wine? I was wondering, was there a lot of wine flowing? Oh, there was so much wine. That’s cool. You do? Did you do it at your home or where? Where? No, we went to. So first off, we picked a really fancy hotel. It was important to me that they were, that they got the nice hotel because not for profit. You’d never get the nice hotel. Right. You always get the burger. I have a trouble with that. I, I believe we all deserve the best. I mean, we don’t, that doesn’t mean we have to fly first class but it doesn’t mean we have to fly in the coach either. We could, we could do, you know, comfort plus is, is ok. So, I, I, yes, I, I agree that that’s common but I, I abhor it. Well, that’s fantastic because a resort. Yeah, we picked a nice place, a nice hotel in Toronto, um, because it was central and we had folks coming in from all across North America and I’ll just set the stage for your listeners. I, of the 12, I knew four, I think three were coaching clients. There were four that I did not know very well and two that I knew hardly at all because, uh, the network that I wanted to create was wide and I wanted that diversity. So you can imagine all of us showing up on the 12th floor to the bar because I invited everyone to the bar for 7 p.m. and these 12 women come in that don’t know each other. And I’m thinking to myself, well, this is either gonna go great or this is gonna go awful. And within 20 minutes it was really funny because immediately we took over the bar and the volume in the room went up to here and you could see the connections and the conversation starting and the, and the, the shared experiences. I mean, when you’ve lived as a CEO at, when you’ve dealt with the tough stuff, there’s a lot of common ground that you can hop into. And I’d like to think I had a part in that too. I wanted a certain profile of leader. I believe that we have to be ambitious and compassionate and kind. And so that kind of creates a space where you get high achievers but, but high achievers that are willing to share, willing to connect, willing to offer, offer their stories as value add to, to colleagues, share vulnerabilities that Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, you absolutely. I mean, you should take some credit. You, you decided who the 12 to be. Uh and you, you know, you had set expectations for all of them leading up to, you know, because all of your conversations leading up to that, that wonderful weekend. All right. So that was, that sounds like great fun. I uh so then did you meet in? I’m just uh I’m interested in the, you know, 12 women CEO S sharing and some don’t know anybody. They don’t know each other. A lot of them don’t know. You hardly know two of them. You know, how does it sort of coming? So you had drinks on Friday that’s casual. But already the stories are starting to flow because you’ve set up what we’re here for you. You’ve set the expectations for the weekend. All right. So then what is like Saturday mornings you get together as a required breakfast or what, what happens? So let me give you the flow and, and yeah, we’ve had one zoom meeting before. That’s all we’d had, which basically an introduction before the weekend. So the stage was set Saturday morning that we were gonna workshop together. So what was really funny was, of course, they’re all type a, right? So I kept saying, ladies, I’m in charge, I’m in charge, you know, because they want to qualify, they want to understand expectations. Uh That was really funny. And I actually had a wonderful um colleague named Michelle Fishing, who was our facilitator slash editor for the book. And she spent a full chunk of time in the morning talking about storytelling and remember some of us in the group of fundraisers, not all of us, but we all know comms, but these are personal stories completely different. So we actually talked about the components of storytelling. We talked about what an arc of a personal essay or, or like you said, um article or whatever would look like an essay, you know. And um we, we kind of framed that out, but here’s where the magic started to happen. And I share this because I think this is a great tool that people could use in different ways in their offices. We w we broke into groups of 31 person told their story, one person asked questions and one person listened, Tony. So the listener at the end of the story being shared because we’re trying to workshop which story we would include, right? And you know, they’re type a, they’re like, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one and we’re trying to connect them to the most meaningful story tied to leadership because that is really what I wanted to get to. And a story that wasn’t just, here’s my broken heart. Like here’s what I learned from this. That’s what I’m not so interested in the story of what you, what you experienced. But I’m really interested in what you overcame and how you managed it because that I think is a teachable moment, right? So what happened was when these women would hear their words reflected back to them by the listener, there were light bulb moments. It was like coaching like they, oh I never thought of it that way. And what they thought the story was about was actually not what the story was about. And that was really cool, Tony, really cool and AAA good number of them share that in, in their essays that, you know, as I’m writing this chapter for the, for Jenny’s book, uh I’m, I’m thinking about how I grew and reflecting and I, I’m, I’m seeing this my own story in a different perspective. You know, in, in, not in so many words but those exact words, it’s, it’s actually that one g starts with, I’m the little engine that could, I don’t think of myself as a leader. I just show up every day and do my work. And then as she describes her journey and where she came from, um this is Heather Bach in the book. And at the end she says, you know, as I write this, I realize that I have a great accomplishment and that my values and what I stand for reflected in my leadership journey and I can now own that, that label, that I am a leader. Um And I thought those were beautiful moments and a lot of empathy too like, wow, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Like we have some pretty heavy topics, right? Like racial discrimination. Um A lot of tough the school of tough knocks, but the book is actually quite lighthearted. I would say Tony, I don’t know how you feel about it, but it’s, it’s got everything. No, I agree. It’s, it’s uplifting. It is, I mean, it’s uh you know, it’s, it’s empowering. Uh and, and uh yeah, there are, there are, there are hard moments. Uh We’ll get to them. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to empowering women. Let’s tick off for everybody. Just so we have a general framework, the five, the five pillars, pillars around which the, the essays are organized, just tip them off, just tick them off and we’ll run through them, we’ll run through them. So I’m just reading for my book. So I get them in the right order. Um So the first one is perception barriers. A K A imposter syndrome. The second is embodied roles. When you take on the role too much, I would say, embracing challenge, I think that one’s self explanatory as well as Glass Cliff assignments. This one’s getting a lot of play in the media. It’s interesting that folks have picked up on that one. We can, we can talk. That’s the idea that you get hired into a situation that’s almost impossible when you’re falling off the glass cliff. And finally, visionary, I all of the women and the research says that these women can see something that’s possible where others can’t. And so their ability to bring people along is one of their defining elements of leadership. So those are the five including seeing things in themselves. That’s all right. That’s where you’re, you’re in the, you’re in the vision, you put your story in the visionary pillar. All right. Um, some perception barriers. This is the, the first one, interesting that you started with a, with a tough one. this is a woman of color who’s introduced, uh, her is introduced to the board as, uh, uh, I want to introduce our new Fabulous BPO CEO and her world like the room starts to close in on her and it only gets worse. Uh It doesn’t get better. She’s hoping it’ll get better. But this is uh this is uh say please pronounce your name for me. Uh Oh, no. All right. Why don’t you, uh why don’t you share a little? We, we, we won’t have time to do every 12. 1 matters. But you opened with a, you opened with a, you opened with a probably the I, I think the most egregious example of racism and sexism uh in the, in, in, in the book. Yeah. And she’s so gracious about it. And uh so to set the stage, what her experience was of that was that all of her other credentials didn’t matter. She was defined into a box of being pal and that’s all that she counted for. So I learned a lot from her story. I’m actually still, I’m getting goose gump as we talk about it. And she talks, I tell you my synesthesia kicked it. I got some tears reading a couple and I got some chills too. So, same, same reaction. Yeah, it’s pretty, uh, and I think the other thing for us to understand, especially myself as a, as a white person is, you know, when, when women of color go up to be CEO S and they even go up for a job. First of all, there’s tons more risk for them. But what I didn’t realize was they become the symbol of their entire community. So she talks, she’s from Nigeria. So she talks about all the Nigerian finance scams that kind of chased her. So she triple quadruple checks, all the finances for her organization. Um Never thought of that. Never crossed my mind that she would think that way. So the ability in these stories to see the perspective from other people really powerful. Um She talks very strongly about her community and about the the collective decisions they make together. Um And one of the most so using that example of the three people listening when she told her story, the thing that everybody kept saying over and over was I can’t get my head out of that um that room in the bathroom, the the cubicle in the bathroom she opened with this story about the cubicle being her friend and how it had seen her highs and her lows and that was the place she’d retreated to when you know, somebody had had, she found out that one of her colleagues made more money than she did, even though they, you know, they did the same job when she got turned down for promotions. Also her happy stuff too. And, and the visual of that cubicle just stuck with us and we built the whole story around it. Why did you make the choice to start with? Uh uh a uh a difficult story? That’s a great question. Um So one of the things we said to the women because they’re type a, they’re like, OK, which pillar do you want me to write to? And I was like, no, I want you to write your story. Our job as editors is to figure out how we thread this together. And so they knew the research, we had prepped them with the research and they’re all really excited about it. But the goal was not to write to the pillar because I it it kind of pigeonholes you a bit and then you have to, if you know, you kind of flip from first person to like academia speak, you know. Um And it was, it was hard, it was challenging for many of these women who represent organizations Tony to represent themselves to speak. It wasn’t hard for them to speak from the heart. But the majority of the issues were around. How much do I tell? Will I be hurting anybody by telling this? Right. So where’s the line on that? Um And so why did I start with a, a compelling story like that? I wanted people to notice the book. I know people don’t read full books. My story is at the very end. So I thought, you know, people would, if they were so inclined, they would make it there. Um And I wanted people to pay attention to what we had to say. And the perception barriers is real. One of the things the research said that I just want to highlight is it’s not just external perception barrier. So people not seeing you as a leader that’s gets discussed a lot, but the internal perception barrier, am I good enough to do? I have the skills, you know, we talk about competence, builds confidence. Well, what if you don’t have a lot of competence? What if you just don’t have a lot of time being a CEO how do you build, build that address the perception barrier from internal? So I thought it was, I still think it’s a kick ass story. The there is a lot of introspection in the book. You know, you talked about the imposter syndrome. We’ll get to um I think it is Delphine who makes the is a very good example of what uh her essay is a very good example of what you just described about how you see yourself your own perception as well as the perception of others. Um And, and just women, you know, women are not uh raised to be, to be leaders. And I think that even in 2024 I, I think it’s less true than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still true. Oo overall women are just not raised in those girls are not raised in those with that kind of thinking with that kind of role. So the, so the self doubt is, I think remains pervasive which we need to, you know, you’re, you’re making a step at, you’re, you’re taking a, you’re chipping away at this, this perception barrier and we all have it. I mean, I think that’s the other thing was at, at the end of the day, we live in a society. So we’re never going to get away from it, Tony. But what we can do is prepare ourselves better. So that I think that’s where you see the hope in the book is, I’m not here to say who with me, poor me, these wonderful, these horrible stories. This is what happened to me. I don’t care so much about that. Actually, I care more about how you handled it. I care more about what you did about it. And and the book is about and here’s how we can prepare the next generation better because once you know these stories, once you know, this is going to be part of your experience, different sections of it or whatever, then you cannot be so thrown off your course when it happens, right. That’s the thing and, and if you’re not alone and I think it’s important for us as people who’ve arrived there to say this is what happened because it really changes the way you see someone because leaders still have this shiny veneer around them. I don’t know if you, this drives me nuts but you know, that shiny veneer that they’ve got all the solutions, all the answers they can’t possibly be, show themselves as vulnerable or human or, you know, miss a pick up with kids. That’s the jack we, uh, theory of leadership. He’s, he’s been, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know, debunked but he’s, he’s, he’s an anachronism now, but we’re in a transition and we don’t have a lot of models of that ambition and compassion. Right? I mean, look, let’s look at the, uh, the female models we have, we have Angela Merkel, you know, relatively masculine. Hillary Clinton is maybe one. Kamala Harris, not so much, but like those, those were how they, they, what they had to do to survive was become a, more of a masculine energy. And so we’re in on charter waters. We have our new Zealand Prime Minister, you know, who, who really came to the office with a different experience. Um, and I think modeling that and showing that it’s viable, it’s not better or worse, it’s just different and it’s viable, but we’ve got a whole chunk of years behind us of society that’s been expecting something that’s that unconscious bias. And I want to be part of blowing that sucker up. You, you are, you, you are. Um And we’re gonna move to the next pillar. But I, I, for, for listeners who may have ever been identified as an interim, stuck in Interim, your own, again, the outside perception, your internal perception, your own, your own self worth and value. Uh There’s an excellent uh essay uh by uh by Megan about Interim. It’s called Interim. So um that’s a must read actually, that’s a must read too because there’s so many nuggets there, things like asking for pay at the new interim level, like asking for clarification on how long like how do you define yourself worth and, and how long, I mean, you can very easily be taken advantage of as an interim. I just wanna say, let’s move to uh what, what, what was the last thing you said? But if you let Yeah, yeah. All right. Now uh our next pillar is uh you call embodied rolls. What, what does this one mean to you? The easiest way to describe it is the uh OK, fine. The corporate lawyer gonna use your example. Um who gets breast cancer and who decides she wants to move into not for profit into cancer and becomes the ceo of the blah blah blah cancer society and can no longer separate her personal and her professional work lives and the risk of burnout is so great because they over identify with the constituent group they support. Do you want to uh le le let’s, let’s talk about the story of uh uh of the Navy jag. Jag because that one struck me as a, as a former lawyer. She got much further in her career in law than I did. Uh uh Illuminary, the two star admiral that she rose to um II. I think that was a, the way she wrote. Did, did she write the story or did you change in, in editing? Did you change the flow? I love how she opened with the courtroom, the courtroom movement. I thought that was and, and I was thinking of, you know, she mentions, she mentions Tom Cruise and a few good and a few good men. And I was thinking of that uh before, before her reference, I don’t know, I’ve always go to media like I was saying earlier, I was thinking of uh Roberta Flack’s song. Um So yeah, just why don’t you share the, share the story, share Janet’s story. So Janet’s story is that she goes, she’s very funny, by the way, I’m sure you giggled when you read it, right? So she talks about um uh going to deciding to go to law school and the the service calling that she had in her family, right? So her parents had been involved in service and community and military backgrounds. So she decides to become a lawyer and and ends up as a jag lawyer. The, I don’t know if that’s the same term in navy. Yeah. Like a judge, judge advocate general. J so a navy. So imagine being, I don’t know, under 30 on a boat. First of all, working to support the sailors depending on how their, you know, things go along. And the theme of her story was that the system is you, you can believe in the, and this seems so timely, you can believe in the system and you can put your faith and trust in the system. But there will come a moment where you yourself are the system and the expectation and how you show up and do the right thing at that moment really matters and you must never forget that. And so her story goes through this disillusionment. There’s a couple of different instances where one is, she’s wrongly accused of having sex with one of her clients and it is a completely false accusation, but you must go through the process because that’s what the system is. And you get to hear this sort of inner dialogue that she has about. Well, how could I, how could I have slept with him? I don’t even know him like, and she goes through this whole thing and it turns out that, you know, she was the, the attractive young lawyer on the, on the ship and there was some, some loose lips. Um So that was on her front and eventually the charges are dropped. But it happens again when she’s representing someone where she feels that due process isn’t happening. Um And in that case, it’s a very interesting story where someone’s brought, uh, they want to be dishonorably dismissed from the military and the impact is Tony, they don’t get benefits. So it’s serious, really serious. And um it goes through the process of how this judge wants to move this thing through. It’s December 23rd and he’s not willing to wait for time. She hasn’t even met the client and they want to just push the thing through and she judges them about against the system, you know, are, are they acting in the true spirit of the system? Is this fair? I mean, the other part of her story as a lawyer is justice and, and equity and, um, fair process and treating people, uh, the way in the eye of the law. These are all very strong, strong principles of hers. Um, and I, I won’t tell you the ending on that one because it’s, it’s absolutely fabulous. But your question about writing, her writing is very dense, very different than the other ladies. And it was really important to me that I not change it. Um But what I did do was ask or challenge her arc of the story because there’s a lot of different components in this story and it could, it could be, I was worried it could be confusing to the reader. So, one of the things I would do with Janet’s story is I would do a bit of editing and I’d hand it to someone that knew nothing about her. And I said, can you follow it? Right? Because there was a brilliant thread. But I mean, it’s, we had so many ideas. It was almost more of a paring down. Um And to make sure at the end there was a strong message and sidebar. She is, um, the, uh, president of the Girl Guides in, uh Greater Pennsylvania, which I think is just such a perfect role for her girl scouts in the US Girl Scout scouts in central central Pennsylvania. Yeah, two star admiral. She rose to remarkable career in the, in the law. And it’s funny that you, you highlighted that one as a lawyer too, right. So you could, I can imagine you could see, see that story even more vividly. Yeah. Well, it’s a big stretch. I was a lowly two year. I, I only lasted in law for two years. Uh, so maybe, you know, that hearing, if I had been a jag officer, I wasn’t, but if I had, I could see, I could see doing that hearing. But, uh, that’s about it. You know, I, I didn’t get, I didn’t get too far. So that’s a, that’s a, that’s a book in itself and this is another reason why the book I think is so, so fabulous if I May. Is there so many different perspectives? You know, there’s 12. So some of them you’re going to resonate with more and I think that’s really why I wanted this sort of prism experience of leadership. There’s, there’s no one size fits all right. Um, but there’s always takeaways and you’re going to connect on a visceral level with different personalities and different profiles. And that’s what I love about the book. It’s time for a break. Pork bun.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024. Pork bun helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name.org and the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility is easy to remember and helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at pork bun comes with free features like who is privacy, SSL certificates, web and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five star support. 365 days a year. Get your.org domain name for a low priced at Pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony’s take two slide that mic over here. Hey, thank you, Kate. It’s good to have you sitting right next to me. It’s fun. Alright. The Dems I feel bad for the Democrats because they just can’t break through all the noise. All the media coverage of National Make a Will Month. I feel bad for them. The, the Republicans actually were smart to have their convention in July because there’s no point in competing with National Make A Will Month. It’s not a fair game. You, you just cannot break through. So I know it’s hard to find information about Kamala Harris, Tim walls, all the speeches, all the entertainers. Uh It’s hard, it’s, it’s hard to find the news uh out of Chicago. I, I understand I’m having the same difficulty, you know, I, I cannot find it on Twitter X whatever. Uh I have. Yeah, you gotta go looking, you gotta go digging, it’s worth it because there, there is content there. But you’re gonna have to spend a lot of time looking, you know, as you sort through the National Make a Will Month coverage which dominating the media channels. So II I feel bad for the Dems and that’s Tony’s take two Kate. You know, all I have to say is Happy National. Make a well month. We’ll take it one more, one more voice in the crowd. We’ve got vu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of empowering women with Jenny Mitchell. You know, that makes me think of another film that is, I have not seen yet, but it’s on my, it’s on my immediate list. Uh It’s called Nashville and I, I just from the trailer and what a friend who recommended it told me is it, it’s a mash up of 20 some different stories taking place in Nashville, Tennessee. Uh And so, you know, some you’re gonna resonate with and some of the characters, you know, are not gonna hit home so, so hard. But um all right, it makes me think of, uh makes me think of this fabulous book. Embracing Ambition. All right, and I’m gonna see Nashville soon. Um OK. Embracing Challenge, our third, our third pillar. Um Yeah, you know, these are, I mean, the women are all go getters, you all are, you all are go getters all became CEO S. Um but this one, you know, you picked out somewhere uh like Sherry is, is new in the role Sherry’s Sherry’s essay is called ambition. Why don’t you, why don’t you share Sherry’s story? Love this. So um Sherry of course, holds a dear spot in my heart because she’s one of my co coaches in Cha. She does my West Coast coaching stuff. Um And the thing about Sherry’s story is, you know, the other word it could have been was underestimated. She was underestimated. She wanted to, she had a recreation therapy background and she wanted to work in the health care system in a leadership role and she brought herself with her big girl pants up to the CEO S office who was a woman and said what do I have to do? I mean, isn’t this textbook? What do I have to do to have your job one day? I’m here for, you know, she was in her thirties. What do I need to do? And the woman slammed the door on her vision and her dream by saying it’s never gonna happen. You’re not a nurse. And the story is about a, how she picks herself up from that b how she perseveres, which is a theme on this, embracing ambition, right? Embracing challenge. Like just because I know nothing about it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. Um I, I hear that a lot with clients around finances, right? They come in through a programming background and then they have to do budgets and planning just because you don’t know how to do it doesn’t mean you suck at. It just means you don’t know anything about it. Well, you do, you do suck at it now, but we’re all trainable. If your, if your mind is open, you’re trainable and, and by the way, perseverance, I think pervades all five pillars. I mean, all these women, you know, they kept at it, they kept, I mean, we’ll talk about that with the visionary pillar but keeping at the despite the despite the internal and external perceptions and real and real challenges too. Real boundary, real. Yeah, real challenges. Uh the, the perseverance pervades the book. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And uh when So when Sherry was declined that way, she found another way to get there. She offered to take on extra files at one point in time, she got offered a secondment into the foundation and that became a huge career for her in fun development and uh sidebar for our not for profit people. She had 10 cents, 10 separate uh well, be a bit like your cuny job you were talking about earlier, right? 10 different centers with 10 different needs in long term care. And it was a team of three of them that used to manage all of those fundraising portfolios, raising millions of dollars. So it was quite a play. Um And she persevered and that’s how she got her seat at the senior leadership suite table was through that side door that would never would have opened up if she had gone the other route. So to me, there’s um there’s a lot of, and being underestimated is such a typical experience for women. I wish it wasn’t, but don’t believe what they’re saying about you. That’s really a message if, if you want to do it and you want to try it, put your hand up and try it and don’t be afraid to fall down. It’s, it’s part of, it’s part of learning is failure and embrace it. Don’t believe what other people say about you. Uh You were just referring to uh my, my previous fundraising work at Cuny when you and I were talking about that before we started recording uh that I did plan to giving fundraising for Cuny, which had 2020 different colleges. That’s the, that’s the connection. Um You know, I, yeah, there’s another one I want to talk about embracing and embracing Heather, the other, the other story but was so, so Sherry’s story is uh is ambition, Heather is identity. Um And she’s one of them who calls out that writing the essay helped her own self identity. Tell, tell us about Heather. Yeah, I love that. And I love um the other thing that comes out of hers is the perseverance. She, she grit grit determination. She, we’re calling it perseverance. So just to tie that up into what we were talking about a minute ago and I think uh it’s called Identity. I mean, we had so much fun with these titles, right? You can imagine us playing with these titles and organizing them all and I sort of decided they needed to be one word titles. Um And I wanted them to have really clear expressions of things. So with Heather, she grew up from a read background, she’s actually from a, a farmer from a small town and um grew up in a retail background but didn’t like the way that people were treated in it and could see another kind of leadership. Um And this story really is about her learning how to believe in herself and learning how to own her values and her principles. And once she did that, Bob’s your uncle, like she was able to, like, it’s a bit like owning it is part of this process. I actually am a leader. I find that a lot with number two and number ones, like there’s this sort of moment where you walk around with a post it note on your head that says I am a leader. I am a leader like you have to almost start believing it and, and uh you know, letting it be in your bones. Um And Heather is very understated, I would say. But the, the realization in the essay I think for her was maybe it’s OK to own my experiences. And, and how about I find my own way of, speaking of my accomplishments and I find that incredibly liberating and inspiring for so many women who are, who are maybe pigeon hold or stuck that also dovetails with finding your own brand of leadership, which, which we we’ll come to. But, you know, uh not fitting uh a, a mold uh a per a perceived mold, you know, a phrase I’ve been hearing lately is uh for women’s leadership is changing the chair. I really like that. It’s this idea that you don’t try and sit in the chair. But how do we change the chair? Like if you, you, I have a CEO friend who negotiated into her contract, she’s a single mom that every time she’s away, there’s a fee that’s paid to her for childcare. And I was like, oh, talk about equity, right? Rather than equality. Like everybody needs different things. And, and so changing the chair is, is something I really like that metaphor. It’s, it’s stuck in my head lately. The glass cliff, it’s our, our fourth pillar, the common glass cliff assignments and particularly I, you know, I, I did not know that phrase. Um and particularly interested in that, that women of color are often put into these types of no win CEO situations. Talk about, talk about the glass cliff. Yeah, we know the glass ceiling right where we hit a, a bumping spot where we can’t get past that title or past that job description. The glass cliff is the literal experience that you’re stepping off a cliff, which is sliding off the side of the mountain and you are, it’s just figurative. It’s just sorry. OK, we’ll lose it. But I, I sometimes physically it feels, it feels like it, right? Like what did I get myself into? Um So let’s back it up and explain um how that happens. Why does that happen? Because often there are so many red flags with the organization that nobody in their right mind would touch it except somebody who was hungry for a leadership or title that would normally not be given to them. So that explains your, your black person, I think of immediately or any of your bike pop communities. Um And so they’re predisposed to take on those roles. The other thing that happens with um you know, the emergence of activity diversity and inclusion is boards think they want a profile of a certain kind of person or how they look. And then when that person gets in there and actually starts making the change to make it friendly and warm and inviting and inclusive. The boards go. Oh no, no, no, no, no. We didn’t actually want that. And that’s kind of my interpretation of what happens to Moj J Cox in, in the book is, you know, she was brought to great fanfare for an organization that felt it was very pro progressive. And when she got it, she was walked out 14 months later. And the thing that always sticks to me about that story is she still to this day has no idea why her husband gave her a depression hammock that she now uses in a very different way, 100 80 degrees from depression. But uh why don’t you, why don’t you just share that, share that part of how do you say your name mode? Yeah, that part of her story. So, uh and then all important to hear that she’s a New Canadian. Um and uh has been worked in the federal government, has a very storied career and, and lots and lots of experience. And so when she was unceremoniously fired, um very publicly, her husband, she went into a great depression, as you can imagine. And by the way, they have four kids. So it’s not like she could just curl up on a couch and her husband brought home this depression Hammock where they put it in her back room or her back 30 she’s a big long property. And so at the back there was this Hammock and she could look either way she could look out to the meadows or because she could look the other way 100 and 80 degrees and look at the house. And whenever she was just the most beautiful moment in this story where her husband explains how she can use, this is sort of, I know you need your space, I’m gonna create this space for you. And so whenever that feeling comes over, you, you have somewhere to go. Can you imagine a house summertime kids like running around? Like I can only imagine, like just keeping it together and, and, you know, uh she was a primary breadwinner at the time. These are things, you know, we traditionally don’t think of women as primary breadwinners, a lot of pieces to it. Um And now she uses the Hammock like you said, she’s changed what’s really changed since this experience is she’s not willing to compromise her quality of life for a job. She not want to call compromise her family life. She’s, she’s not going to give her left kidney anymore. She’s willing to be part of the conversation and it is very active in the not for profit world here in Ottawa. Um But she is or sorry, she’s in London, Ontario, but she is very, very committed to the work but has completely different boundaries. You know what I took away from that depression Hammock story is that she had a AAA spouse in, in different people’s lives, could be, anybody could be a spouse, partner, dear friend, mentor, but who knew what she needed knew, just knew how she processes, knew that she needed space away from a family of six to, to, to process this, you know, e egregious public firing. She was walked out by six board members flanking her following her to the office gathering. You know, they’re, they’re all huddled around as she’s hovering around as, as she’s putting her family photos in the box. You can just imagine the tension and the, I mean, I don’t even know how you remember it, you know, it’s, and then they escort her out to the boundaries of the property. Uh uh You know, she can’t remember what she said to her husband just, you know, come pick me up the outrage to the humiliation, uh the, the inhumanity. So, so I took away that, you know, she had somebody who knew what she needed, gave her that space and the physical, the Hammock, the physical hammock between the two pine trees. Um So having a, a support network or person who, who know that knows you well enough to know what you need when, when you are needy, critical I think. Critical, I love that. I love that takeaway. Those are the glass cliff assignments. Um Let’s talk about visionary, the fifth pillar, visionary. Um Yeah, you gotta keep, you know, you gotta stay true to your dream. The dream be the change you want to see in the world by, by Angelou, I think or no, there’s countless tw you know, the, the uh the kind of gimmes on Twitter X, you know, but, but you do, you do have to stay true to your vision even when it’s, it’s not happening as big as you wanted it to. Uh with that was Heather’s, that was Heather’s essay, uh called Collective Vision. Share, share, share Heather’s essay. So this one is about, I’d say it really speaks to ambition. She had a vision of what she wanted. She was working for a national Food Scarcity organization. And I think also she, she was, you know, we’ve all been through that thing where we’re super excited by something and we can see it and we can feel it. And when you have that prospecting meeting that just goes like golden and you’re, it’s all happening in her head in the, she’s in a meeting with this, I imagine it’s a Canadian food store supermarket chain throughout the country, hundreds of stores throughout the country and it’s all un, not un, it’s all unfolding because she and the guy mark from the, from the supermarket store or supermarket company are just aligning. It’s all, you know, she’s, it’s all emerging in this sound like a two or three hour meeting. Yeah. And it, uh, I mean, she comes home to kind of 1010 ft off the ground, walks into the office and starts explaining it to folks and she’s so jazzed and they don’t receive it very well. They start punching holes in it. They start asking questions, they start challenging how they could do it in that timeline that, you know, the programming people are starting to freak out like it’s kind of like your worst nightmare. And you’ve got this dichotomy between the two and she talks very pointedly in the story about how um she had to learn how to bring people along on the journey. And for some of us that are raging enthused, just myself included, you know, packaging myself so that people can see where I’m going and kind of leaving bread crumbs and showing people. It’s possible, you know, those visionaries uh take big huge visions and break them into pieces and bring them along and to her credit. She talks about, you know, I remember the line and it says now I don’t want you to read the story and think this is not about holding true to your vision. I want you to hold that vision like a candle like a flashlight. Um, but be mindful, I think is the message of how you piece it out and let people come with you because it’s so easy to get. Right. Nobody can choose my vision. Nobody wants to do what I want. Right. So you pick yourself up, you dust off, maybe you have your piggy party. Like that’s ok. I totally get it. Um, and then you get up and you figure out how you’re going to make it happen and that’s what she did in that story. And she, uh she’s a very successful um corporate sponsorship company and she has a super duper strong vision for that Tony. I, I have to say I was reading, I was thinking, as I was reading, I was thinking, all right, I just quit. I have a vision if you don’t see it, I, I’m, I’m bringing millions of dollars to this. This is the, the biggest corporate sponsorship of our history. You asked me to make change here if you’re not on board. I quit. Uh That’s, that’s why I’d be a terrible employee. Even CEO, I’d be a terrible CEO. I, I would never rise to CEO. Uh uh uh but uh are much brighter, much more empathic, much better listeners. She’s, that’s another thing that comes out in hers is listening, listening to your peers, uh even those who are working for you, you know, you may not consider them your honor lateral peers. But listening, listening is III, I would listen up to the point where somebody says no. And I, I can’t, I just, I don’t take no. Well, I don’t react well to no. And I think too, I mean, you’re from New York. Let’s just talk about that. Right. Right. But on the flip side I find with fundraising, you know, we get tired of explaining ourselves. Right. I don’t know about you. But, and I know your work, but I mean, how many times do I have to repeat the best practices? I’m I have a client right now who, who I’m trying to get to do two appeal letters a year. Like do I have to, you know, blue in the face, trying to explain why two appeals is better than one appeal a year and how much time that takes so that the ability to listen in that moment. My invitation is rather than go defensive. But I think Heather did well was to listen with empathy and try to understand the objection like we do with major gaps. What’s the objection that I can then address? And I also find I my, some of my language is pilot projects. Let’s test it. I use words that make people feel more comfortable. So we don’t have to do two appeals for the rest of our lives because they can’t imagine that. But they can imagine trying it. Right. So that visionary piece and I, I really feel for the frustration. We are almost always as fundraisers. The Lone, The Lone Voice, um which is why we need community and why we need radio shows and why we need to, to, you know, read each other’s stories and, and get jazz like I’m just so pumped right now. Right. We’re, we’re getting to unpack this stuff and, and talk about it normalize it. Let’s make the uh the final essay that we talk about. Let’s make it the Jenny Mitchell essay. Uh because this is another key takeaway about, you know, yours is called, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna tell you a story. Yours is called No. Right way. What’s it? What’s that all about? Yeah, I had this perception that there was some right way of doing leadership and when I arrived there, I would know type a, can you say much? And I, I really felt very frustrated with the, the leadership books because they would just kind of spew best practices and they would, you know, give you frameworks and da da, da, da, da da and I’m a big reader. Um I love to read, I love different ideas. I’m an idea generator. But the experience I had was being a chair of a board on a very challenging board at a very challenging time. I give myself grace on those that there were a lot of transitions sidebar. One of the things that happened was we were an institution that had been around since 1881 we had restructured in 1939 under a new share structure. And because of governance, basically nothing had changed until t uh 26 months before I took over. So I’ve been on the board during this governance transition. And so I kept saying we were 100 year old birth into this new organization. And so the story talks about me, I’m, I’m gonna say, trying to lead, trying to lead the way I thought leadership was supposed to be done. And, and a lot of that came from books. You are a big reader, you were reading, it comes out a couple of times and you how many leadership books you were reading? Yeah, because, you know, I must have been able to find a solution. I’m a smart girl, I should be able to figure this out, right? But the problem is, is you’re always wearing somebody else’s coat when you do that and you’re not showing up as your authentic self. And one of the things I talk about is how I over prepared for everything. I mean, I over, over, over prepared. I had agendas, I had sub agendas. I had where I to get to where I didn’t want to get to. Um of course, being a relationship based person because of my background, um it was very important to me. I think I did a great job on team. Not something I think is a real strength of mine with that group. And so they were able to come with me on things. But internally I was super stressed to the point where I was, I was having panic attacks and that’s what I talk about in the story. Have the 12 women gotten together again since that, since that first meeting. So in Toronto we got as close as we could, we had nine of the 12 in Toronto for the launch. Um We’re in conversations about an audio book. I think that would be super cool because we have all those different voices in different wilts. Um And I’m learning that there are more and more people um listening to audio books which really bodes well. So we have a tentative for the New Year in 2025 to come together for a conference and do the recordings. Um Maybe there’ll be a spa day just saying more wine. Yeah. Ab absolutely. Yeah. Oh, that would be, I think that would be fabulous if, if, if you could get all 12 together and they will call on our group chat. We call ourselves the Magnificent 12 which I really love um unexpected, that sense of camaraderie that has stayed from this project. It is not, it is stronger today than it was. I, I’d say every single one the women is, is there for them whenever anything happens. Um And there’s been some, some bumps in the road and I’d like to think that this model of book, I’m putting it out to the universe right now. You know, the topic could change but the framework could stay, you know, you could do a book on women’s women in politics. I think you could do a book on, uh, you know, conservationists. Like, I think there’s a way and not like using examples of conservationists, not their work as researchers and, you know, what they study, but how they feel about the environment and, and why the environment matters to them. And I, so I think it’s a really cool model. I’m not seeing anybody else doing it. Um And I think it really gives a wonderful reader experience. Let’s talk about your, your takeaways, like your top three or four things. You know, you, you were talking, if you were talking to an audience of emerging leaders, even current leaders. The book is, the book is, is uh I think relatable to both whether you’re in your twenties thirties or in your fifties, sixties uh as an emerging or current CEO or in somewhere in the C suite. Um What are your, what are your top takeaways? Number one, nobody is gonna advocate for your career the way you can advocate for your own career. So don’t put your career in somebody else’s hands. Number two, it’s OK to take up space to ask questions to challenge the status quo. Um And it will probably be expected of you. And number three. The only person that has to believe in you is actually you, when you make that choice for yourself to decide that you’re gonna show up as a leader, all these subtle shifts happen in your behavior the way you are and people notice and people change and people receive you differently. It’s beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny Jenny Mitchell, chief visionary officer at uh cavender. Tell us the story of uh Chander. Why, why? What’s a, what’s a, I never caught one. What’s a cha? Yeah. So a cha is actually a fish. It’s a sort of a colloquial name for a fish, kind of like a chub, a very generic fish. But it lives on the east coast uh between like Boston and uh Nova Scotia in those we call those Georgia banks. And this fish is incredibly adaptable so it can live in fresh water, it can live in salt water, it can live when the water gets all murky. Um It can live at the convergence of the brininess that you have when you have uh fresh water and saltwater together. And I thought what a fantastic analogy for the work of leadership and not for pro we adapt, adaptability, we survive and we get better and we evolve. Her book is embracing ambition, empowering women to step out, be seen and lead. You’ll find her on linkedin, Jenny Mitchell and her company is at chander.com, Jenny. Thanks so much, real genuine pleasure. Thank you. Pleasure. And just for your listeners, the book is available on Amazon. So, um I really appreciate this conversation. It’s been, it’s been really fun. Tony. I’m glad. Thank you next week, community and engagement with Michelle Boggs. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com who are sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. I still I can’t help it. I love that alliteration. I think you should just start doing it from now on. You can take the whole section right there and buy pork bun, looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility pork bun.com. You’re just trying to get out of work. Caught me there. I’m on vacation. You could take that one back to work. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.