63: Kemi Ilesanmi on Passing the Golden Baton and Workplace Transitions
Kemi Ilesanmi is a cultural strategist, coach, and connector with over 25yrs of experience in the arts sector. She has been executive director at The Laundromat Project (The LP), and previously Creative Capital Foundation and Walker Art Center. A graduate of Smith College and NYU, she also serves on several boards and advisory councils. In December 2022, she “left well” after 10yrs at The LP and traveled the world for a year with her husband. Now back in Brooklyn, she sees the world with fresh eyes and renewed hope.
Main quote:
Leaving well means to me a sense of satisfaction, a sense of joy, a sense of doing one's best to leave in a state of respect and intention with the communities and people that you are involved with.
Additional Quotes:
I really wanted to expose [my team] to all of the parts of doing this work because I wanted to make excellent leaders of color for the field. And not just for my organization. My thinking around that was that I was feeding the field. I was strengthening the field by making them well rounded leaders at my organization.
Learning how to navigate our own emotions as well as the needs and demands outside of us was a big learning that we carry through. And was a really important muscle and skill set that we learned as an organization, because it always allowed us to say yes to other things.
To connect with Kemi:
To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/
To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.
This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
The episode that you're about to hear with Kemi is really interesting because it talks about the golden baton. It also talks about the power of a group hug. And I think the thing that resonates with me during this conversation was the intention and the thoughtfulness that Kemi has used when she planned at the beginning for the end of her tenure.
This conversation includes conversations about tiaras. And custom made dresses, sister friends, and also the importance of slowly telling others as a slow leak. When you know that it's time for you to go. She also has some really, really practical and powerful things to recommend to you about sending others to events, how to strengthen the field and how to talk to your team about being in a continuum.
This is really good stuff. I'm excited for you to hear it. This is one that I really am asking you to email me your thoughts afterwards. What feels hard about what Kemi is going to share with you? Email me at Naomi at Hathenholm. com. That's H T H A N D H O M E. com. I would love to hear from you and talk about this.
Enjoy the conversation. Kemi Ilesanmi is a cultural strategist, coach, and connector with over 25 years of experience in the art sector. She has been the executive director at the Laundromat Project and previously Creative Capital Foundation and Walker Art Center. A graduate of Smith College and NYU, she also serves on several boards and advisory councils.
In December 2022, she left, well, after 10 years at the Laundromat Project and traveled the world for a year with her husband. Now back in Brooklyn, she sees the world with fresh eyes and renewed hope. Kemi, I am excited to have you on and I want to jump in to the first question. What Which is to ask if you can share a bit of that story of leaving well, as it relates to your time at the LP, and I'd also love if you could include your definition of the baton pass and the group hug.
I'm so happy to be here, Naomi. Thanks for this invitation. So, while I was officially the Executive Director of the Laundromat Project for 10 years, I actually have much longer time with the organization because I was on the board for about 5 years and then took a couple of years off and came back as employee number 2 and our Executive Director and we had maybe a couple hundred thousand a year.
In our annual budget, and over the 10 years, when I was executive director, I very intentionally thought about what it would. What was needed to build us into the kind of institution that, um, could last and that I would be able to leave. So, literally, on the first day I took the job, I already envisioned it as a 10 year commitment.
And that is what came true. And by the time I left, um, at the end of December 2022, we had about a dozen staff. Our budget was over 2 million dollars, and we had a really strong sense of who we were and what we had to offer the field as a community arts organization based in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. So, 1 of the things that I began to envision about a year to 2 years out from the actual leaving was that I wanted this to be a really joyous, I wanted my transition, my moment of transition to be joyous and to be intentional and allow me to pass this on to the next person that would take this on.
I was the second of what has now become three black women in a row to lead this organization. Risa Wilson was the founder and she Gave me her baby as the first official and full time and paid executive director and 10 years after that, I was able to hand it off to Aisha Williams, who had been my deputy director, which was really pivotal when we got to hire her for that role.
She actually was hired for a director development role and two years later became deputy director and four years after that became the new executive director of the organization. And I really envisioned a party. There was a tiara involved. I had clothes made for me in Nigeria, one of my home countries, and we had a party.
And Aisha being in her role had actually been the person who really organized the party. And I wanted to make sure that while she was really focused on me, and our community was really focused on me, I knew that it was really important, or felt that it was really important that We take time to welcome her and not just say goodbye to me.
So I worked with the board secretly. We got a gold baton and we decided where in the program we were going to do this, which was right after my speech of goodbye. I then said, by the way, I should come up to the front, handed her this gold baton. All of the board. Uh, past and present came up and surrounded her and gave her the biggest, most beautiful hug and welcomed her to this new role.
And our board chair at the time, George Suttles was able to remind her publicly in this community of love and accountability that we were all here for her success and that she was not alone. And she was getting to build on this long at that time about. 17, 18 years of an organization, um, and it's growth.
Everything that you said is so powerful. I'm curious to know if you could share a little bit about the long runway. So when you said that you went into it and you kind of knew that 10 years was going to be your run, your runway and your tenure, How much did your staff and did your board know about that 10 year mark?
And I'm also curious as Aisha came on in the development role and then into the deputy role, was that your plan all along? Was that Aisha might be that person that was going to carry the baton forward or did that happen a little bit more organically as the years went on? That's a great, great, great question with lots of little tentacles.
I had dinner with a friend over the weekend. And she said to me, she reminded me that when I took the job, we went out to lunch and that I had told her then that I thought I needed 10 years. The funny thing is, like I said, I always knew that, but at that time I thought I'd only mentioned it to my husband that early on.
And I slowly started telling other people in my circles, I have a kitchen cabinet of sister friend EDs and we, they knew early on that that was my general plan. I had a general timeline. My coach, who I had for the last six years of my time, she knew, um, early on that that was part of my plan, but no, I did not share that with my staff and I did not share that with my board.
That's not something that was normalized, right? So now I think I would think of it differently, but at the time that didn't seem like the right thing. Thing to be explicit about in that way. What I did do was I was really clear that I needed to build in ways for the board and the staff to understand that I was working in concert and that even if I were not here, the organization could stand.
So beginning to put in systems. Documenting information, getting information out of my head and any other staff members head into documentation, whether it's recording Google Docs, whatever it took to get things out of our heads became systematized. I also started putting in policies for leaves and, and things that, again, just allowed people to understand that things could be different.
We started talking about things like promotion and retention and things that allowed people to, again, understand that they were in a continuum and that we could build together towards something stronger. And that it was not about my personality being the thing that held us up. There were a few things that made that even more clear.
Number one, I had a medical leave about four years before I left. It stepped out for a month. Well, the people who stepped into place were my leadership team, which were Aisha and the program director, and then two years after that, during COVID, I took a two month sabbatical, which had been planned, and I decided not to cancel in the midst of the pandemic.
And once again, our leadership team with the help and support of the board were able to lead the organization for those temporary periods. And I would always point to those as moments of strength for the organization. That was my messaging internally to the board and the staff that look what we could do even without me being here.
So another key thing was that I. Several, uh, once Aisha was hired as our director of development, and our program director at the time, Atwe, was in place, and they were hired about six months apart from each other, a friend suggested that I really think of the three of us as a leadership team, that, and do, set up structures to make that clear, one of which was having regular meetings Started off as every twice a month and once COVID hit it became every week and that's now what remained our standard what having a explicit leadership team did for me and for the organization was made visible again internally, as well as externally.
that we were being held up by several amazing folks. It also meant that we could make decisions together. Wow. Making it through that pandemic alone would have been a lot more difficult if I felt I had to make every important decision by myself and instead was able to have discussions, gather input.
You're going to talk to this person and, and this is what our messaging is. You're going to do this. We were able to always hold the organization together. And part of my thinking about that was also, we are a small organization. And the reality is most of the time staff come in for a short amount of time, whether that's two years or five years, it's not usually a lifetime commitment.
There's only but so much room to grow and people, especially nowadays, people move around in a different way and want to seek new experiences, professional experiences. So I try to keep a healthy attitude about that, even if I might be personally disappointed that someone, Oh, you're so fantastic. I love you.
So what I did with our leadership team, and I did this with the rest of the team, but really focused on that for this conversation, was I involved them in everything an executive director did. We talked about budgets, we made decisions about budgets, we, they attended all of the board meetings and participated in the sections that related to their work.
They. represented the organization outside. People would invite me to a conference and I would say, I really think our program director would be a better person. Oh, Aisha, our deputy director is actually excellent about community fundraising. You should talk, you should have her speak to your class or your conference.
So I really wanted to expose them to all of the parts of doing this work because I wanted to. Help make excellent leaders of color for the field and not just my organization. So that was sort of my thinking around that, that I was feeding the field. I was strengthening the field by making them, um, well rounded leaders at my organization.
That's incredible. And I think that as you're listening to this, dear listener, think about the opportunities that you have in your organization, whether you are an executive director, a manager, a board member, um, and think about what can we just share that you could implement in your own organization. I love that you talked about your kitchen cabinet, because I think from my experience in the political world and also with executive leadership in nonprofits, it's.
Really important that you have a group of people who know what you're going through, who are going through it themselves and can offer ways counsel. So I wanted to just normalize that as well. One question that I would love to hear your response. I have some thoughts of my own, but so often in the funding world and in the nonprofit sector.
Grant applications will ask about executive transitions and they want to know if you are, and they would, you know, in air quotes, I say they want to know if you're stable as an organization based on executive transition. But that's not real life. Real life is that people leave. And so I want, I'm curious how you would recommend nonprofits navigate funding and grants when an ED is leaving.
We don't want to wait to apply. We don't maybe want to you. I don't know, air or dirty laundry that someone's leaving, but I just, I'd just be curious what your recommendation would be. It is always so tricky to, to navigate, um, these things, particularly around funding, because we know historically.
Philanthropy and even government funders, etc. Get skittish around transitions, particularly if it's a strong and respected leader. They're kind of like who, who else could do that? And the answer is a lot of amazing people. If you give them the chance, one of the things that I. 10 years that felt important for the organization.
For me, this was always about, I am not the organization. I am the steward of the organization right now, but the organization is separate for me. That was always kind of my mindset. So, early on, one person in my sister kitchen cabinet said to us, In the group because we give each other all kinds of advice.
We all learned amazing things from each other and we remain really great friends. Now, she said, Oh, every relation, every key relationship that the organization has is shared. She never held. She was never the only person that knew that key funder. Or that, you know, amazing advocate or volunteer, so she would always take someone else to the meeting or refer to them or have someone follow up or whatever that was.
And I adopted that early. Once she said it out loud, I was like, Oh, yes, let's do that. A number of our all of our key funders. I was never the only person they knew, whether it was a board chair, Atwe and Aisha, or, you know, the other members of my leadership team for most of my tenure, etc. I would mention them, I'd bring them to meetings, they'd be part of key presentations.
So that there was always a sense that I wasn't the only person that was holding this up. And We were lucky, you had asked earlier whether, um, I had always had Aisha in mind. I did think she would make an amazing executive director. She was with me for six years. That's a really long time in non profit life.
So I didn't take it for granted. And again, I did not have that explicit discussion with her. But the minute I told my board, my board chair, and then the executive committee that I was stepping down at the end of the year, I gave them about Almost a year's notice. They organically immediately said to me, is that something do you think Aisha would be interested?
And I thought she might be interested. I thought she'd be fantastic at it. But I knew it was their responsibility to kind of hold that. And the minute they asked, I said, yes, I think she could be let's. Kind of think about this, so we actually work together to kind of bring this to her as an idea and give her time to think about it.
And then. move through a process. She still went through a process with them. So all of that is about a certain kind of intentionality and deliberateness brought to the process. Well, and what I'm hearing you say, I'm just thinking about some of those questions on grant applications, and I'm like thinking how beautiful it would be to be able to say, yes, we actually do have executive transition coming up, but the way that we've run our organization, like you had said earlier, um, it's held up by several of our leadership team, or to be able to say, if you have that long runway, that we are going through a process, um, to seek our internal support.
So there's, I'm just thinking about beautiful ways, uh, in what you just said that people can take away, uh, for examples. We have talked before, Kemi, about executive coaching and how powerful it is, and I would love to hear from you, and maybe it might be a really pointed conversation directly to board members who might be listening.
Maybe it's a pointed set of recommendations for the executive director who is listening. I would like to talk about your belief. that it's board responsibility to make sure that budgets include coaching as a paid benefit for staff, as well as if you'd like to talk about exit packages for executives.
Absolutely. When I first came on board at, uh, the Laundromat Project way back in 2012, um, I had a friend who had been an exec, her first executive directorship for about six, she preceded me by six months to a year, and she had a coach. So she suggested to me that I should get one because, It was really helping her.
I went to, um, the LP's board at the time and they just didn't feel that we could afford it. And I certainly couldn't afford it to pay out of my pockets. I, I went without and several years later, about four years later, perhaps our then new, um, board chair was someone who was actually transitioning into coaching herself.
Professionally. And she said, I really think you could use a coach. I think it'd be really helpful. And the laundromat project should pay for it. And I said, why? Yes, I agree. That would be amazing. In the interim, I had my kitchen cabinet, which I had put together about a year, year and a half into my time that served as my kind of informal coach.
But having a formal coach was an absolute. Absolute game changer. The success of my time as an ED was in no small part because of her support and listening and pushing me along and giving me resources, skills, and a place to just kind of share, vent, learn. We met, I don't know, maybe every three or so weeks for the first couple of years and eventually became monthly.
And because I was having such an incredible time and I could see how I was changing my leadership, my board could see the difference, my staff felt something was happening. I knew it was really positive. So about a year and a half in, I was able to put money in our budget, taking from general, you know, Unrestricted funding, be it things we raised through from private donors, you know, just money that we could use for anything.
I took some of that money and was able to fold in our leadership team. So I was the 1st, then I folded in the 2 people that were members of our leadership team. And then a year or 2 after that, I folded in the managers and then eventually the whole staff, including entry level positions. They did have to be full time.
What I also did. And they had different levels, like the, cause it is quite expensive. It was a significant portion of our, our budget. We were able to, for the managers and the more junior staff, they had a mix of individual and group coaching. So they became their own kitchen cabinet as well, which was also important to kind of remind them that they could lean on each other and then giving them some of that individual time to kind of.
Lean in on what they felt they needed to talk about or learn about and we also implemented and that part of this was the covert times we implemented care circles, which were, I think we sort of did them seasonally 3 to 4 times a year starting in. March of 2020, literally, our 1st, 1 in response to covert was about 2 and a half weeks in late March.
And because we already had someone we knew and loved and worked with. We asked her if she could do this care circle for us. She had done some all staff facilitation for us in the past. And we had a space to hold some of those incredible emotions and that rollercoaster of emotions and able to speak to one another.
My favorite story from that, we had been in it for, you know, again, like two and a half weeks. We were meeting every day by Zoom because Zoom was new and being home was new. And we were reading, you know, we all need to stay in touch. We were And she created a space for people to kind of give feedback.
Again, this was late March. So, you know, two and a half, three weeks into the pandemic. And she created the space where a junior staff member was able to say, we are having too many meetings. Can we please not meet every day. We and everybody else was like, oh, And, and we stopped. And we went to once a week and eventually once things had stabilized, we were able to go back to, you know, kind of a more.
Um, normal, uh, pace. We had a weekly staff meeting anyway. We had an extra weekly meeting for a few more weeks and then eventually that phased out as well. But being able to create those spaces for someone to say that and feel safe to say that because the outside coach had asked was really important.
There's so much there and I think about the work that I do with my clients and I also think about non profit organizations who don't have the benefit of coaching, and I see them struggle, and I often just think to myself, it would be, not easy, because it's not easy, but it would be such a simple shift and such a simple pivot.
To introduce coaching, and I love that you shared a little bit about the tiered structure of, you know, maybe it's group coaching for your program staff or your frontline staff or your outreach workers or what have you, and it's more frequent one on one for your executive leadership, but I would just encourage you as you listen to this to think of ways that you could, and I also think, Kemi, that it doesn't have to be a Long term.
I think you can get benefit from maybe a month of very intentional coaching. Maybe there's a project that you have or a program that you need to get over the finish line. Maybe you have a program you need to stop having someone else facilitate. That is powerful. You you leaned into this a little bit. So it's a great segue into the next question around experimenting.
You experimented with the care circles. We've talked before privately about what becomes institutional and what is a short term project. So I would love for you to talk a little bit about what you've learned as an executive director about the importance of experimenting and then also go back a little bit to what you talked about in the beginning about the importance of documenting.
I. Love the idea of being able to remain nimble while putting down roots and somehow being able to navigate both of those was sort of my, what I felt was my charge as an executive director and as someone who came into a relatively young organization that still didn't quite know exactly what it was. It had, we had some ideas.
We knew we were interested in artists of color and communities of color. We knew that we wanted. To make the world better through the activity of art in regular places like laundromats. The reason we're called Laundromat Project was this idea of being able to meet people where they were in their own neighborhoods.
They didn't have to go to a museum to catch up with us. They could be on their sidewalk, their laundromat, their local library. So very early on, I really, with a very small team that eventually, you know, grew bigger, said, let's try different things. We have a, we had a signature, um, residency program and fellowship, even that change over time, but, um, we wanted to figure out, should we work in schools?
Should our residency be 6 months or should it be a year? What's our curriculum really? What have we learned? What can we put together as a curriculum? What can we teach? So all of that. Particularly for the first few years, I wanted to leave room for us to really figure it out. And we would raise little pockets of money that were very project focused to get something going.
And then we would evaluate. Did that go well? Did we like it? What should we do? What was hard? What was easy? And we learned to say no to the things that weren't working, which is one of the hardest things. Particularly when you have communities that want you to return or want you to continue, right? So learning how to navigate our own emotions around things, as well as needs and demands outside of us was a big learning that we carried through.
Um, and I think was a really important muscle and skillset that we learned as an organization, because it always allowed us to say yes to other things. And that's what I would emphasize. So that ability to kind of. Go big picture and then hone in on what are the details and what's actually working to be experimental and then go, oh, we did the experiments and this is the thing that goes forward.
And those other things do not. Was something we had to keep doing and keep learning and our board had to go along on that journey with us for some of this, right? Like, move in, move out, move in, move out. And then each time we were getting a better and clearer sense of what we were good at, where we did need to dig in, where we did want to put more money and more effort and more staff and more infrastructure.
And for each of those things, we would write them down, we would put little reports together, we would. We would share, we would explain to funders and others what that journey was. So I always, as I mentioned before, I always wanted to take the communities along with us on the journey so that things didn't feel so shocking if they shifted.
We moved neighborhoods two times while I was there, which meant saying goodbye to neighborhoods where people wanted us to be. And each of those, one of my greatest. And one of the things I'm most proud of is that we still talk to all those people, and they still talk to us, because we figured out how to not let our experiments be harmful to the people and communities that were involved in the experimenting, which I think if we, if we talk about Keeping the communities or who we serve at the forefront of our mission and then secondarily to that, we prioritize like you were just talking about experimentation and documentation that helps to normalize the fact that that's a normal ebb and flow.
I think it also probably says a lot about your ability to grow the organization through the funding that you received and being able to grow that budget because funders were taken along for the process. So that's really powerful. I'm going to shift a little bit, Kemi, as we are on the back half of this conversation.
And I would love for you to share what three words you would use to describe your personal relationship to change and or transition. The three words I came up with that I think relate to change and transition for me are expansive futures ahead. I love that. I love that so much. And I think about. You know, as you said it, it, it's beautiful together, and then if you picked each one of them apart, they could also have so much meaning.
And I think the other thing that's powerful inside all of this work with change and transition is that it's not always meant to be easy or good or happy, um, but there's also a lot of grief, uh, transition brings with that. So, is there anything that you would like to say about change or transition that people might be shocked or surprised to hear?
Thank you For me, and this relates to the expansive futures ahead is I'm the kind of person who, if I go to a movie or play, I actually don't care how long it is. It could be 75 minutes or it could be 5 hours. As long as I know ahead of time that it will be 75 minutes or 5 hours. If I'm really worried about something, an event.
I focus on the day after the event, and that's what gets me through the event. Uh, so when I was leaving the LP, I try, I would try to be as present as possible. I wanted a joyous exit, etc. And I really Focused on planning my year of travel that was on the other side of that time, which was the expansiveness, which was the future, which was the ahead.
So for me, one of that's one of my secrets of the way I cope with change is that I usually have something that I can hold on to that comes after the change. And of course there are changes that happen that are not planned can be a surprise. And that still remains my instinct is like, okay, that thing happened.
Wow. Wasn't really expecting that. And as soon as I can kind of figure out how to wrap my head around whatever that thing, that bit of change is, I start focusing on what it looks like on the other side of that. So. That's my coping mechanism, and it has worked for me in many different parts of my life, not just, um, my professional life and, uh, and, um, kind of living well, but it is for me, it worked for midterms, exams, like all of that, that was sort of the ways that I kind of, I set little treats for myself sometimes on the other side of what that thing is that scares me.
How refreshing is that to hear you say? Like, I think that we so often get drugged down into the spiral of this is terrible. Why is this happening to me? I have no control. That's such a huge thing is I have no control in what's happening. I think of so many of my executive director clients who have it.
given notice, and then they feel like that time between notice and their last day, they have no control. But I'm encouraging you as you're listening to this to think about what Kemi just said about plan the treats, plan the ahead, plan the after. Um, even if it's not the first day after your last day, what are you going to set up for yourself?
And what, what can you, where can you bring joy? That's incredible. I'm so glad you said that. Last question, Kemi, what does leaving well mean to you? Leaving well means to me. A sense of satisfaction, a sense of joy, a sense of doing one's best to leave in a state of respect and intention with the communities and people that you are involved with.
And really that part of doing one's best, it doesn't mean perfection. It means doing one's best with the fullness of your spirit. Can we thank you for all of the impact that you have given to the world inside of your leadership spaces, whether officially by title or simply because of the way that you move.
Thank you for joining me for this conversation, we will have all the places that you as a listener can reach out and get in touch with Kemi in the show notes. I appreciate you. Thank you so much, Naomi. If you've not yet taken the Workplace Transition Archetype Quiz to discover your natural relationship to change and transition, you can do that at naomihattaway.com/quiz. To learn more about living 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.