Beyond Capacity: Reimagining Sustainable Leadership in the Social Sector – with Safi Jiroh, LeaderSpring Center

Are you questioning the sustainability of leadership practices in your organization? How might centering the experiences and perspectives of women of color transform leadership in the social sector? What would it look like if funders truly listened to what nonprofit organizations need and responded accordingly? In this powerful episode, Rusty speaks with Safi Jiroh, Executive Director of LeaderSpring Center, to answer some of these questions.

This episode delves into LeaderSpring's evolution from supporting only executive directors to creating a fellowship for women of color leaders at all levels in nonprofits. Safi discusses how the organization redesigned its curriculum to address systemic barriers and promote liberatory leadership practices while challenging unsustainable expectations in the nonprofit sector.

Safi offers profound insights on what women of color bring to leadership roles, including community, empathy, lived experience, love, resilience, intuition, and truth-telling as primary contributions. The discussion tackles the current political climate where diversity, equity, and inclusion work is under attack, with Safi emphasizing the need to "fight to dream" and "fight to innovate" despite opposition. She challenges philanthropy to examine practices that create "bondage for nonprofit organizations" and to demonstrate the will to change by releasing control and embracing vulnerability.

Bio

Safi’s deep family and cultural history of social and racial justice rooted in an ethic of love, service, and liberation in Oakland, California, formed her fierce dedication to servant leadership and development of a strong racial justice lens in life and work. Her over 25 years of experience in the public and social sectors as a leader, grant maker, consultant, facilitator, and volunteer have been the portals through which her life-long commitment to the advancement of human dignity has manifested. Safi brings her keen lens of racial equity and social justice to our Fellowship program, of which she is an alumna, and Impact Consulting work. 

Prior to LSC, Safi’s leadership positions included: Executive Director of the Marcus Foster Educational Institute, Executive Director of Banning Cultural Alliance,  Community Faculty Fellow with the Center for the Arts at the California College of Arts, and Grants and Nonprofit Management Analyst for the City of Oakland’s Cultural Arts Department. In each position, Safi established equity-centered foci to aspect of the work. As a licensed minister with a Master of Arts in Spiritual Formation and Leadership, she works at the intersections of faith, formation, and justice. She has been an independent organizational capacity building consultant and facilitator since 1990 supporting hundreds of projects, a certified Integral® Coach since 1999, and has served on numerous local, state, and national Boards and public policy committees, commissions, and task forces. She is a keynote speaker, a former dancer, and a private poet.

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Learn more about Fund the People: https://fundthepeople.org/