CASE STUDY
A Racial Justice Organization at a Turning Point
A national racial justice organization needed a new President at a moment when the ground underneath its mission was shifting fast, and when the wrong hire would have cost far more than a failed search.
“We needed a leader who could hold the movement and the organization at the same time. Losing either one wasn’t an option.”
~ Board Chair, nationally renowned racial justice organization
The Challenge
The organization, one of the largest and most renowned racial justice advocacy groups in the country with a membership base in the millions, was navigating a difficult transition. The departure of its previous leader had left fractured relationships between staff and leadership, with distrust running in both directions. Fundraising and stakeholder engagement had slowed in the wake of that departure, at the same moment the organization was facing a crowded set of marketplace pressures that demanded a strategic, aggressive response.
The timing raised the stakes even further. Many of the policy gains the organization had spent decades fighting for, from voting rights to workplace protections to DEI, faced active rollback. The board needed a leader who could deepen the organization’s mission and hold corporations and government accountable, while also having the discipline to manage a complex internal operation. Getting this hire wrong would not just mean restarting a search. It would mean losing momentum the organization could not afford to lose during a defining moment for its work. Leading an organization with an annual budget of more than $10 million and a staff of approximately 25 to 30 people, the next president would be responsible not only for advancing the mission, but also for guiding the organization through a period of significant internal and external change.
This was a challenge the organization had not yet faced. There was no interim plan or prior experience to fall back on. They knew they needed a strong external leader, but had less clarity on the internal work that would need to happen alongside the search to set that leader up to succeed.
The Decision
To help navigate a search where the margin for error was this small, the organization brought in BoardWalk Consulting to lead the process and help rebuild alignment between staff and leadership along the way.
Rather than follow a fixed search process, we adapted our approach to meet the organization’s evolving needs. The work extended well beyond the candidate search. We met with stakeholders across the organization, surfaced differing perspectives, and helped leadership and staff reach a shared understanding of what the next president would need to accomplish. That alignment became the foundation for every decision that followed.
With that clarity in place, BoardWalk cast a wide net across the country, drawing on former partners, board members, advocates, and other trusted relationships to identify leaders with the rare combination of movement credibility and executive leadership experience the organization required. From more than 40 prospective leaders, only a handful advanced as formal candidates. Because the mandate was so specific, we held two benchmarking sessions with the search committee to refine the leadership profile as the search evolved.
Throughout the engagement, we also absorbed much of the work that accompanies a leadership transition, freeing the board and senior leadership to focus on the organization’s future rather than the mechanics of the search.
The Outcome
We helped the organization select a President with a deep, demonstrated commitment to racial justice and equity, and a track record of delivering results in some of the most demanding environments in the field. The candidate came in with strong respect and credibility among peers both inside and outside the sector. The organization’s reaction to the hire was immediate and positive.
The changes went beyond the placement itself. Staff responded to the transparency and engagement the board brought to the search process, a signal that the relationship-building work done alongside the candidate search had taken hold.
BoardWalk has stayed in touch with both the organization and the placed leader since the engagement closed, and both continue to speak positively about how the transition unfolded.
Asked to sum up what made the engagement work, the organization’s response was simple: it got done, even though it was hard.
BoardWalk Consulting is an executive search firm and trusted partner to mission-driven organizations facing leadership transitions that are too consequential to hand to a firm that treats them like a transaction. Before we develop a leadership profile, we conduct a listening tour, engaging boards, staff, and stakeholders to build a profile that reflects not just the role, but the moment. We run a small number of searches at a time, on purpose, because every engagement deserves senior attention from start to finish.
If your organization is facing a leadership transition where the stakes are too high for trial and error, let’s talk. Visit boardwalkconsulting.com/contact to start the conversation.
