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Related stories from this week:
- Facing staff resignations before his official start date, Endowment CEO makes new hires
- Top staff members resign from New Hanover Community Endowment
BS: Alright, Johanna Still, thanks for being here. This week on The Dive we took a look at the recent exodus at the New Hanover Community Endowment, plus some new hires.
JS: This week, we saw the exit of the executive vice president who had been running the ship for the last several months, Lakesha McDay. We saw Communications Director Kevin Maurer and Operations Coordinator Alison Cheng all submit their resignations this week. And the Endowment isn't a huge organization, so this is effectively reducing the staff by about a third. And this all comes before the new CEO, Dan Winslow, who you've written about, is set to begin. And right after we released The Dive, he made some new hires before he's even started. So I know you dug into those hires and you did some research. Can you walk through first the exodus and the incoming new slate of employees.
BS: Yeah. So the exodus, a third of the staff left. We should note that Lakesha McDay has agreed to stay on for several months to help Dan Winslow, the new CEO, through his transition as he takes the reins. We have some questions about whether or not having a consultant for a few months will really fill the role of having a reliable second-in-command, but that's kind of a wait-and-see, although we won't have to wait long: Winslow starts next week. We talked to Endowment Chair Bill Cameron about this; he admitted that some of the resignations caught him by surprise, but he said this is not unusual with leadership changes. He does hope that there won't be too many more resignations. He said he couldn't say whether or not there would be more. And he basically remains optimistic that when Winslow gets in, he'll hire the people he needs to hire, and that the Endowment will be off to the races.
And later this week, we saw that very thing happen, Winslow hired two new people, one of whom is a sort of replacement for Communications Director Kevin Maurer. This is Jodi-Tatiana Charles, a very well-experienced marketing guru from the Boston area, worked with Winslow back in the day in Mitt Romney's Republican administration as governor of Massachusetts. I think they've crossed paths a few times since then, Charles has run her own marketing firm for about 15 years, and she will be the interim chief marketing officer. We're now being told that this position will eventually be brought in house and turned into a full time position, but we don't know exactly when and how. The other hire is Gabriella Diaz, who worked briefly at the same firm, the Las Vegas based tech firm Rimini Street, where Winslow ran the legal team so they have also crossed paths. She's going to be the new administrative assistant, which is a position the endowment used to have, hasn't had in a little while. In any case, some hay has been made about the fact that Winslow knows both of these people, although given the fact that he has no philanthropic experience, it's not surprising to see him reach into his Rolodex and pick people he knows for this gig. But that's kind of where things stand. Even though he hasn't officially started, he's trying to, I guess, staff back up after facing these resignations.
JS: And it should be noted that William Buster, who previously was the CEO of the Endowment, he pulled Lakesha McDay, his former colleague from the Dogwood Health Trust out of Asheville. They both work there, and so it's not totally unusual to pluck your former colleagues to come work with you again.
BS: No, not at all. I have heard some concerns that the naming of the titles seems to indicate that they're leaning towards marketing, which has more of a corporate feel than communications director, which has more of a public engagement feel. That could just be semantics, that could just be Winslow's choice of words based on his experience. Could be doing the exact same job that Kevin Mauer used to do. But I think it speaks to a frustration with the direction the Endowment is going, which seems to be more insular, more corporate, less public.
JS: Lots to stay tuned to on the Endowment, and we will be having a piece come out next week, so hopefully we'll have more to discuss by then.
BS: Absolutely, well, Johanna Still, thanks for being here.
JS: Thank you.
