“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.”

-         Chinese proverb

If you’re like most young women, you have a lot of dreams for the future. Some are likely big dreams that would affect everyone, such as changing the world for the better, while others are probably small dreams that would affect only a few, such as having a child of your own or landing your ideal job. But all these dreams need an incredible amount of intelligence, determination, and heart to become reality; perhaps not coincidentally, it’s exactly those qualities that are essential to becoming a leader both in work and in life.

The Academy for Leadership and Governance would like to give young women – and, by extension, young people – a sense of how to turn hopes for becoming a leader into reality. By young women we mean women in their twenties and thirties, most likely working, and either interested in joining or already a part of the nonprofit professional community.

Although there is still a gender gap in both leadership responsibilities and compensation (see our epilogue for details), women are strongly represented in nonprofit administration.  We believe that young professional women can and will build on the achievements of their predecessors to lead at the highest levels of nonprofit management in even more organizations. This book offers you the combined wisdom of five women nonprofit executives, gained through career and life experiences both positive and negative, with the goal that their stories will help you along your own leadership journey.

To elicit that wisdom, we brought together a publication Advisory Committee of nine young women (all under 40) who are currently building their careers in the nonprofit sector. They are working in education, the arts, social service, and health care; some are also young mothers just beginning to strike the important balance of work and family life.  After some discussion, the committee gave us their questions about what it takes to become a nonprofit leader to be relayed to our panel of co-authors.  They also reviewed drafts of the book as it was taking shape, making sure it spoke fully to their most pressing challenges.  We are grateful to them for sharing so much of themselves and their dreams with us.

Our co-authors are current central Ohio executives who over the course of their careers have led a variety of nonprofit organizations with annual budgets ranging from five hundred thousand dollars to five million dollars. In response to the Advisory Committee’s questions, the co-authors shared their distinctive personal and career histories to illustrate how individual each person’s leadership journey must be. One co-author started her career as a scientist and astronaut before becoming the executive of a museum of science and industry. Another was a dancer and dance professor before rising to leadership within academia. One had children before pursuing full-time employment, while several others had children mid-career. Two co-authors have doctorates; one has a master’s degree, one a law degree, and one a bachelor’s degree.

Each began her career with a path other than nonprofit leadership in mind and evolved into her current roles through service on nonprofit boards, through education and by stepping up to take responsibility.

We would be remiss if we did not thank three more women who worked behind the scenes to make this publication a success.  First, the text reads smoothly thanks to Laura Bidwa’s careful eye as editor.  The fine look and layout of the book is the work of Cyndi Daines, our designer.  Finally, the publication was carried through its final stages by the always capable direction of Anna Duke Reach.

Many well-respected authors have contributed to our understanding of the field of leadership, some of them men, most of them writing from a private sector perspective—their insights guide and support our work here. What we hope to add is the perspective of successful women leaders working in the nonprofit sector, the place where some of humanity’s highest aspirations for itself are realized. These women have rich and varied stories to tell about being women, being leaders and finding their own leadership voices along the way.

I hope that in these pages you find the beginnings of what you need to reach for your dreams, as well as the reassurance that your leadership journey has in fact already begun. We’re honored to lend a hand.

Emily Redington