Grounded confidence & clarity on my mission.
“Working with Audrey, I learned to trust my story, my intuition and, my perspective as part of my decision-making process.
Marisa, Director of Development & Communications
Mission: Putting an end to the idea that the end justifies the means. I desire to see nonprofit organizations that are publicly and privately integrated, where vision, mission, and values are aligned in every aspect of our work. I'm pushing for alignment not only in how we tell stories and attract resources (my primary role) but also in how we set plans, make decisions, and take care of our people.
I wanted coaching because I had just finished a seven to eight year sprint as a nonprofit founder and Executive Director. The work that I had been doing? It was my dream. I'd been working toward this particular mission for a long time, and now it was over. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, and I had no energy to figure it out. Coaching was a space to process the good, bad, and ugly, to figure out what threads from my work I wanted to gather and what threads needed to be dropped. Of course, I wanted to figure out the next steps in my story, but for that to be possible, I needed to reflect on what my story had been. I asked Audrey because she had volunteered with my nonprofit, and even then, I'd found her to be supportive, humorous, insightful, precise, resourceful, and compassionate. She helped people connect where they were to where they wanted to be, helping folks not only own their skills but also navigate the potential pitfalls that could keep them from their best next step. She'd done that many times for my nonprofit's clients, and now I needed that skillset for me.
Audrey helped me get clarity on my mission and what has been my consistent theme of meaningful work. She made space for me to name the intersection of what I was good at and what gave me life. Audrey gave me tools to fight against imposter syndrome and pressed me to explore my relationship with money, both key pieces in the puzzle of being prepared for salary negotiations, which I'd actually never done before. Finally, I learned to trust my story, my intuition, and my perspective as part of my decision-making process.
Several of the insights from my time with Audrey gave me confidence in pursuing and accepting the position that was my next step as well as continuing to ground me in what's fundamentally important to me. Mission is important to me: I need to work for a place that draws out the "yes" in my heart. And taking care of the people who make mission happen is important to me. I'm no longer willing to accept sacrificing people on the altar of mission. And the lessons that I learned around salary negotiations? I've shared those questions and lessons freely with friends and colleagues.