How can a city as diverse as ours and a sector serving to support all communities not find one woman of color for the five female nonprofit leadership who retired in 2019?
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Two years ago, when I was asked by WBJ to write about the diversity among women in leadership roles, two women of color led Fortune 500 companies. Last year, there were none. While I was dismayed with that fact, I was energized on how the political field had changed, and, I found an inspiring SHero in professional sports. For this article, I again checked the Fortune 500. Besides the interim placement of Mary Winton as CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond (she was replaced by a man in October), no women of color leads a Fortune 500.
Since I didn’t see any progress on a national, corporate level, I decided to look locally at nonprofits. With Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, the magazine Nonprofit Quarterly has been tracking the national trend and started foreshadowing the upcoming departures of nonprofit CEOs. In 2019, five female nonprofit leaders retired in Worcester, and not one was replaced by a woman of color (To be fair, Community Healthlink in January appointed Tamara Lundi as interim CEO).
How can a city as diverse as ours and a sector serving to support all communities not find one woman of color for these opportunities? What does that say to the people they serve? Yes, we have recently seen progress in nonprofit governance by way of boards (the Greater Worcester Community Foundation and Mechanics Hall both named women of color to lead their board of directors) but it’s not enough.
The Building Movement Project’s report Race to Lead: Women of Color in the Nonprofit Sector says “persistent bias continues to hold back women of color from rising up the nonprofit career ladder.” Key findings include:
Qualifications are not a factor as all respondents had similar years of experience and backgrounds in education.
It is not based on a lack of aspirations as more women of color responded they were interested in leadership positions as compared to their white male and female counterparts.
Women of color lack representation, and systems are in place to make it harder for women of color to move up. People from all races reported the lack of representation in leadership roles is a structural problem and biases and stereotypes hinder progress.
As someone who aspires to always be a leader my family and colleagues can be proud of and who girls can look up to, I find this report and the lack of women of color in nonprofit leadership roles within Greater Worcester troubling. I feel and have lived these tribulations to the point where they impede my productivity, but I will keep going. An interesting finding from the report was 63% of women of color seek mentors outside of work. I’m fortunate to have a great group of peers who know that lifting each other up will only help make our world a better place. And it’s even better when you include the younger generation.
Melanie Bonsu is the director of development & marketing/communications for the Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts.
