Memorable Job, the Last
My last job was a long-termer that ran for 20 years, with many twists and turns. It was memorable all the way through! There were many challenges, some great travel and many good experiences. I landed in a non-profit private foundation that works with children, youth and families in out of home care (foster care and kinship care).
It was terrific to leave the profit obsessed banking industry for an organization with a mission to improve life for people. My job duties changed and morphed over the first few years. After about 18 months, I became the Chief Financial Officer, then later added the title of EVP of Administration and responsibility for technology, facilities, planning and - oddly enough - child welfare research. For about a year and a half, I had the communications function as well, but I rebelled and we moved that to another EVP.
Some of the amazing aspects of the job -
I learned way more about child welfare and social work than I ever could have imagined.
We had a very involved Board of Trustees who met 11 months of the year. The majority of meetings were held in ever-changing locations all over the country.
On these visits to cities and Indian reservations, we would meet with local organizations and state child welfare people to listen and observe their programs and their challenges.
The Board and Executive Team traveled every May to D.C. to meet with Senators and Congresspersons, and their staff, to educate them on the needs of children, youth and families. I was able to see the Capitol and House and Senate Congressional offices, and even sit face-to-face with the Senators from my own state. We would each do 10-12 meetings a year, in teams.
We visited notable places, like the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, the Carter Center in Atlanta, the Ebenezer Baptist Church and MLK memorial in Atlanta, the JFK Library and Museum in Boston, the New York Stock Exchange, and more.
Our Indian Child Welfare unit led to several visits to reservations in Washington, Arizona, Montana, and North Dakota. I loved the reservation visits, with cultural celebrations, meaningful gift exchanges, and very committed tribal members.
We brought the investment portfolio in-house from a contractor, and I was then a member of the investment committee. We had so many meetings with so many investment firms - probably most of the well known investment banks and money managers, and lots of little ones.
The job ultimately fit me well, as I like being a generalist and I was able to dabble in all kinds of topics and learn a ton. Having responsibilities for several functional areas was a benefit in being able to direct my short attention span to different things and shift my time around to work on what seemed most interesting at the time - subject to emergent demands.
The best part of managing is to find people's individual strengths and support their growth and development. I liked to coach people and give them opportunities.
I retired in two stages. First, I gave up the title and responsibility for all areas save technology (which was about half of the people that worked with me). I then worked half-time for two years on just technology services. It was kind of special to me to get away from finance and ultimately retire as a tech guy. It was fun, and rewarding.