25: Jen Bokoff, on Board Service, Navigating Chronic Illness, and Leaving Well
Jen Bokoff is the Director of Development for the Disability Rights Fund and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund. She is on the Management Team and cultivates partnerships with donors.
Jen has dedicated her career to elevating marginalized voices, supporting community-centered solutions, and driving equity and effectiveness. Through frequent writing, public speaking, and facilitation, she enjoys naming tensions and connecting people to resources, ideas, and one another. Jen worked at Candid for seven years, where she developed partnerships, communications, resources, and insights to power the work of the philanthropic sector. There, she led research on participatory grantmaking that featured DRF’s work. Previously, Jen was a client advocate for a community-based organization and later a grantmaker at a private foundation focused on supporting healthy food systems and the arts. She was also a paralegal for the Internal Revenue Service, which taught her the power of active listening and offered unique insight into people’s lived experiences. Jen was identified by Onalytica in 2019 as a top 10 charity industry influencer and by Submittable in 2020 as a top 15 grantmaking-shaper.
A graduate of Tufts University, Jen studied community health and sociology and now serves on the Alumni Council. She is also a member of Disability Lead and serves on the boards of Rhize and Human Rights Funders Network. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, watching theater, aunting, and playing board games and bridge. She lives in Chicago with her husband and dog Bowser.
“I think we have to celebrate change and transition. I think because a lot of change and transition has some exhaustion tied to it inherently, we don’t always celebrate or find as much joy in it as we should. Celebrating endings and changes are just as important as celebrating beginnings and milestones.”
Additional Quotes:
I'm comfortable sitting in tension and sitting in messiness. That doesn't phase me and I feel like a lot of the time when people pretend like everything's all figured out, we're not acknowledging the constant change and transition all around us, or that's on the cusp of happening, because it's always right there.
I think clearly communicating with the people who you're in relationship with that are affected by your decision is critical. It lets you control the message. It lets you set the tone. It lets you maintain relationships that you want to maintain. It lets you be confident in your decision. And it gives you a sense of closure that you don't get in the same way if other people are controlling how you are leaving.
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Transcript:
I think we have to celebrate change and transition. I think because a lot of change and transition has some exhaustion tied to it inherently, we don't always celebrate or find as much joy in it as We really should. Celebrating endings and changes are just as important as celebrating beginnings and milestones.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose, and when possible, I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief, confidence, leadership, and career development.
Braided throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving well framework. Expect to be inspired. Challenged and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice of leaving well, as you seek to leave your imprint in this world. Rights
fund and the disability rights advocacy fund. Jen has dedicated her career to elevating unheard voices, supporting community centered solutions and driving equity and effectiveness. Through frequent writing, public speaking, and facilitation, Jen enjoys naming tensions and connecting people to resources, ideas, and to one another.
Jen worked at Candid for seven years where she developed partnerships, communications, resources, and insights to power the work of the philanthropic sector. She was also a paralegal for the Internal Revenue Service, which taught her the power of active listening and offered unique insight into people's lived experiences.
A graduate of Tufts University, Jen studied community health and sociology. She serves on the Alumni Council's executive and strategic planning committees, and also serves on an advisory committee for the Moths education programs. In her spare time, she's an amateur comedic improviser and bridge player.
Today's episode is going to be a little different because I asked Jen to give me the answers to some of the frequently asked questions on this podcast. via audio, via text message. So Jen sent me her answers in text message clips, and then we're bringing them together into this podcast interview. I'll be honest, when I asked her to do that, it was because I was conducting interviews kind of for my My own sake to do case studies and such, and so not until we decided to launch this podcast, did I ask Jen if we could include it.
So this will be a little different to listen to. I will give the question as a lead in and then I'll play Jen's response. So it's a little less interactive, but still I hope engaging and really full of valuable nuggets for you, the listener. So here we go. The first question to ask Jen is what three words come to mind when she thinks about change and transition?
So the three words I would pick are liberating, overwhelming, and energizing. So the next question I asked is for Jen to tell us a little bit about her relationship to change and transition. I feel like change is constant. And so I'm very comfortable. With that idea, and I think in practice, it's part of my underlying anxiety that there's just always change and there's never full clarity in any aspect of life because everything's always changing.
But I'm comfortable with it. I'm comfortable sitting in tension and sitting in messiness. That doesn't phase me, and I feel like a lot of the time when People pretend like everything's all figured out. We're not acknowledging the constant change and transition all around us or that's on the cusp of happening because it's always right there.
I have been through a lot of change management in a professional context. Uh, in my last job, I was part of a small team that helped. Lead the merger between GuideStar and Foundation Center to become Candid. So that was literally years of change management. And a lot of that, frankly, was not fun for me.
Some of it was hurtful and toxic and not what I personally might have wanted. But on the flip side, it was also exhilarating and a fascinating experience and a really incredible time to show up in support of colleagues and to co create together. Um, there's a lot of opportunity in it as well. And I think personally from that.
And I have really grown through every change and transition that I experience personally or professionally. I think using that example of that merger context, I grew my leadership substantially and even just my work style, which I've been able to bring into my not so new job at Disability Rights Fund.
I feel like I have the same skill set, but a totally different style, um, which has been really powerful and in a personal way, even like navigating chronic illnesses, that's been huge change, change and transition at many different times. And it's, it's helped me to grow as a person and really increase my self awareness and awareness in relation to others.
I like it overall. I think it's, I think it's exciting. I think life is boring without change and transition and there's always some anxiety tied to it as well. I can relate to Jen when she talks about chronic illness. I have my own chronic illness journey as well as my own relationship to disability from an accident that I had a couple of years ago with a motorized scooter.
And when she talks about the awareness for her own body and the things that she needs for herself and the awareness for others in relationship to chronic illness or disability. That change and that transition is something that I wouldn't want to do without and I know Jen and I have talked about that for the same reasons that she talked about with her answer there.
So, moving on, I asked Jen to share a little bit more. about her transition story. She touched on it a little bit with the last answer, but let's hear what she has to say about her transition story. Ended a pretty intense volunteer commitment that I had been involved in for 13 or so years. I had been a very active member of and leader in the Tufts Alumni Council, um, which is a big alumni body that governs.
all things tied to the Alumni Association at Tufts University, which is where I went for undergrad. And that commitment had been a huge part of my life. One, because I really loved Tufts. I loved the people I met there, and I also loved the people who were jumbos who I met after through that commitment.
And it was also a place where I was really able to be a leader. It didn't matter that I was like on the younger side of this very intergenerational board. Um, but they really valued my And I got to build my skill set in everything from communications to fundraising to strategic planning. Like it was really fascinating stuff where I was learning a lot.
But I decided. After a point that it was no longer healthy for me to be a part of, um, there had been a lot of like interpersonal and political dynamics that were just coming to a head in ways where the volunteerism was no longer about the stuff that I loved, like the connecting, the learning, the leadership, the growing.
And it was really like about just navigating people in ways that were reflecting toxicity in other aspects of my life and just kind of not serving me or frankly The intended community anymore. And so I made a decision to step down, not just from a leadership role, but really from being an active member on the council.
And I'll tell you, I haven't looked back once. I still love Tufts. I still want to be an engaged volunteer in the future. I'm still a donor, which of course is everyone's secret question. But I don't, I don't miss the day to day texts and emails and calls trying to figure out how to navigate different personalities because life's too short to spend volunteer hours doing that, at least for me.
So powerful around the things that Jen talked about when she just didn't enjoy it anymore. And I think there's so much. Truth in that, that we, I think, have gotten so far into everything having to be a slog. Uh, that sounds a little casual, but... Where, where can we bring the joy back in? Where can we bring the, the love of what we most want to do into the places that we have committed?
You know, I think it's interesting to think about a commitment is also something that can end. So Jen's talking a lot about volunteerism with these answers, and I think it's important to say that it's not just in work. It's also in our volunteer commitments that those two can end. So the next question for Jen is what's the biggest lesson about change or transition that you've learned or that you would have to share?
I think clearly communicating with the people who you're in relationship with that are affected by your decision is critical. It lets you control The message. It lets you set the tone. It lets you maintain relationships that you want to maintain. It lets you be confident in your decision. And it gives you a sense of closure that you don't get in the same way if other people are controlling how you are leaving.
So, yeah, proactive communication I think is a critical lesson. The next question is in retrospect, is there anything about your recent transition or decision that you would have done differently? I think time is like the daydream forever. In a perfect world, you would just have more time to sit with and process transitional moments before you jump to the next thing.
And even if you take time between like, One thing and the next, it's still never enough time. So I think time is like the perpetual daydream. That works also in the sense that a lot of transitions I think need to happen a little bit sooner. Often a change happens or gets activated because we've reached a breaking point and We haven't been as intentional or bold or able just in the capitalist system of America to say, you know what, it's actually time for me to pull the plug on this thing because I'm ready.
We see that even with like Leaving relationships. Um, I've seen that with a lot of friends where it just, it takes too long to say, you know what, this isn't serving me anymore. So, and even, even with, like, my chronic health experiences, I don't jump quickly enough when I notice things starting to go south again.
You wait until things are really bad. So, time works both in the, like, more time to process after a change, or after leaving, and also timing of activating earlier. I think that's like, that's the biggest daydream for sure. And then, I'm pretty good at this, so I don't wanna... I don't want to say I totally wish I did it different, but I could always do more.
I think we have to celebrate change and transition. I think because a lot of change and transition has some exhaustion tied to it inherently, we don't always celebrate or find as much joy in it as We really should. Celebrating endings and changes are just as important as celebrating beginnings and milestones of maybe a positive light.
So, I definitely did some celebrating and reflecting through most changes in my life, but not as much as I would like. Those are really good lessons, both around the time and taking it, if you have it. And the idea that sometimes you need to make decisions sooner than you might think. And also, I am here for a good celebration of the endings.
So, so powerful. The next question is to ask Jen, What is lost in transition? Using the volunteerism example where I stepped down from a long time leadership and an active role in the alumni council, I think one thing that was lost was connection. A little bit to the university but honestly more so interpersonally with some of the other alumni volunteers and also a bit with staff at the university.
But on the flip side, I don't really feel like it's been lost with the people who matter to me, like the ones who I did get closer with. It might not be as frequent, but it's still there to activate on if I want to. And I know that they still think of me a lot too. So I don't feel like it's been lost, more like it's transitioned.
And I think there also might have been a little bit of Initially, there was a feeling of identity loss where for so long that had been an active, loud and proud commitment that I like talked about and then it wasn't anymore and I think even in peer circles, people who Associate me like with the university might not have realized I went through a transition and so there was a little bit of loss in terms of like how to explain that shift for something that was so big and important for me, but not that big in the scheme of things.
So there was some loss in that as well. I think talking about chronic illness would be a different way to answer that question because I've had various chronic health issues my whole life, some diagnosed and some not. And I think during each moment where those hit a different stage or manifestation, there's a bit of a loss of ability, but even more so the, And just the way that I do things, the way that I approach and interact with the world and with the people in it shifts a tiny bit.
I sometimes think of like grieving what is lost. It's those intangible things like having the energy to go, you know, out and see friends for hours and then go on and do something else later that day, or feeling like I can A bunch of medicine, for example. In a way, those are things that are lost that you need to grieve.
And, like, they don't feel like major losses or even a bad thing. In some ways, it can feel like a good thing after you've processed and spent time on that grieving. And like all grief, it pops up in weird ways at weird, unexpected times, sometimes years later. But I don't necessarily frame that loss as bad, I think it's to, to the earlier question and I was talking about growth and self awareness and just knowing myself even more.
I think that's part of what gets gained through that loss. So the next question is, what would someone be surprised or shocked to hear about change or transition? I think on learning perfectionism. is a good thing. I don't know if people are surprised to hear that anymore. I guess it depends who you are, but like, you don't have to do these things perfectly for them to be right.
And you don't have to know all the answers going into it to go into it. Sometimes it's okay to like, listen to your gut. And just do a thing, or if it's a change or transition that you're not in control of, it's okay to ride the wave and see what happens. It's, it's human instinct to like be risk averse and like want all the answers, but like, you're never gonna have them all, so...
Just go for it or go with it is, is one thing that definitely comes to mind. I think the other surprise might be really how much growth and learning can come from change and transition if, if you're paying attention to it. Sometimes you can't see it in the moment, sometimes you have to look back to kind of notice it, but taking the time to really notice can be such a powerful thing.
And to my answer to the previous question, I think that's where you can find a lot of joy as well. Second to last question for Jen, what are you walking towards as you continue your journey of transition? Okay, so in my volunteer life, I'm walking toward More meaningful, values aligned volunteer commitments.
And for a good, like, I'd say six to, six to eight months after I left my alumni world, volunteerism, I did feel kind of a loss of like, well, what am I volunteering for? Like, I'm always doing little things here and there, but it was all informal. But since then, I've joined two boards that are super aligned with I don't know.
human rights movement spaces and just stuff that's professionally lighting my fire a little bit. I'm connecting with really amazing human beings and contributing in ways that feel more aligned with what I am best positioned to give. So that's something I was walking toward and have. found at least for a bit.
I think, I think some of that's going to continue to evolve and there's different things that feel fulfilling on a volunteer basis at different points, but that's what I was walking toward and what I sought out intentionally to find and then I did find. Okay, another way to answer this question I think would be when I was, it's a pretty similar answer, but I knew I was ready to leave my job at Candid.
Um, you know, I had been there slash Foundation Center for seven and a half years. And It was just time. I had learned a lot, I had grown a lot, I had contributed a lot, and I think there's a point where when you're learning stops being about lifetime skills and the world around you and more about navigating internal dynamics, similar to the volunteer example.
It's time to move towards something else. And this was really during the height of the Trump administration and feeling like I wanted to do something that was even more deeply aligned to my values and really like movements. And I also wanted my identity as like a white cisgender woman to be decentered in the work while still bringing.
All of the skills and talents that I have to a good cause. And so, as part of that professional transition, I actually interviewed, um, people close to me. Family, friends, colleagues, to say like, what do you see me doing? And, I definitely wasn't thinking about fundraising myself, but they all said fundraising.
And so, as I was thinking about it, there were a lot of reasons that they said I should go that route. And I decided to try it when I saw this really neat job pop up at Disability Rights Fund because of how values aligned it was. I knew I was walking toward something that... Resonated deeply internally and where I could be a supporting player in the background, but still also have a lot to give myself.
So, I think I found that, which was pretty cool. Is it permanent? Probably not. I don't think much is to the question on change, but it, it is very, very values aligned and really fulfilling for me. Okay, last question. This has been so great to hear all of Jen's insights. The last question that I've asked Jen is what does leaving well mean to you?
When I hear that phrase, it communicates a type of intention. You are exiting something, you're ending something, you're changing something with intention. You're doing it from a place of proactive thinking, proactive communication, proactive planning to the extent that you can. And you're doing it feeling settled.
It doesn't mean you don't have butterflies or like some anxieties about what's to come. But you know in your gut that what you're doing is the right decision because you've been hyper intentional about it. And the phrase now makes me think of you, Naomi. So, leaving well means... Naomi's awesome book and other things that she is, um, opining on.
Oh, this is a funny way to end it. That's a perfect segue to the fact that the book, Leaving Well, Navigating Workplace Transitions, for the organization is available for purchase. So thank you, Jen, so much for all of your insight and your wisdom. It has been really, really valuable to hear. The intersections and the overlap between work and volunteerism and our bodies, illnesses, disability, and how it all comes together inside the necessary endings that happened to all of us and the reality that we can navigate it with joy.
To learn more about Jen and what she's up to in the world, you can visit the show notes. Thanks for listening. To learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace Visit naomihattaway.com It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation Until next time I'm your host Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.