How I Built My Career in the Nonprofit Sector: Getting to the Table to Create Change

How I Built My Career in the Nonprofit Sector: Getting to the Table to Create Change

When people look at where I am in my career today, they may see the executive titles, the leadership experience, and the years I have spent in the nonprofit and human services sectors.

What they may not see is how the journey began.

My career was built while going to school full time and working full time. Throughout both my undergraduate and graduate studies, I was simultaneously building my education and my professional experience. It was not always easy, and there were certainly sacrifices along the way, but I understood that education and experience were both essential to creating the career—and ultimately the impact—I wanted.

I did not have the luxury of separating school from work. In many ways, the two developed together.

What I learned academically helped me better understand the systems in which I was working, and what I experienced professionally gave context and meaning to what I was learning in the classroom.

Looking back, that combination became one of the greatest strengths of my career.

I Was Always Looking for the Next Opportunity to Grow

My career progression was intentional.

As I gained experience, I continued pursuing positions with greater responsibility. Not because I was focused solely on titles, but because I began to understand that the higher you move within an organization, the greater your ability to influence how decisions are made.

I wanted to understand more.

I wanted greater responsibility.

I wanted to know how budgets were developed, why certain programs received resources while others did not, how policies were created, how staffing decisions were made, how contracts affected services, and how organizational priorities were established.

Most importantly, I wanted to be at the table where those decisions were being made.

That desire became one of the driving forces behind my professional growth.

Each position taught me something different. Direct service helped me understand the experiences of the individuals and families receiving services. Program management taught me how policies and systems affect frontline work. Quality assurance taught me the importance of compliance, accountability, data, and continuous improvement. Senior leadership taught me how finance, operations, workforce development, fundraising, governance, and strategy ultimately shape an organization's ability to fulfill its mission.

Over time, I came to understand that leadership gave me another way to serve.

Leadership Became My Form of Advocacy

There are many ways to give back to vulnerable and underserved communities.

For some people, that means direct service.

For others, it means clinical practice, advocacy, community organizing, education, philanthropy, or public policy.

For me, it became leadership.

I realized that I could use my position to influence the systems surrounding the people we serve.

When you are sitting at the decision-making table, you can ask different questions:

• Who is not represented in this conversation?
• What are families telling us that we are not hearing?
• Are our programs actually meeting community needs?
• Are resources reaching the people who need them most?
• Are we creating unnecessary barriers to accessing services?
• Are frontline employees being given the resources and professional development they need to serve people effectively?
• Does our budget reflect the priorities we say are important?

Those questions matter because decisions made in conference rooms and boardrooms eventually find their way into people's lives.

A budget decision becomes a program that opens—or closes.

A staffing decision affects whether a family receives timely support.

A funding decision determines whether a child has access to mental health services.

A policy decision can either eliminate a barrier or unintentionally create another one.

That is why I wanted to be at the table.

I Learned to See the Organization as a Whole

One of the most important shifts in my career was learning to look beyond individual programs and understand the organization as an interconnected system.

• Programs cannot operate successfully without strong operations.
• Mission cannot be sustained without financial stability.
• Great ideas cannot scale without infrastructure.
• Employees cannot perform at their best without effective supervision, development, and organizational support.
• And nonprofit organizations cannot sustainably serve communities without strong governance, strategic leadership, partnerships, funding, and accountability.

As my responsibilities grew, so did my understanding of how all of those components fit together.

That perspective ultimately prepared me for executive leadership.

Education Was Never Just About the Degree

Continuing my education while working full time required tremendous discipline, but I viewed education as an investment in my ability to lead.

Education gave me language for some of the things I had already experienced professionally. It challenged me to examine organizations differently, understand systems more deeply, and strengthen my approach to leadership and management.

But education also taught me something else:

Learning cannot stop when the degree is awarded.

Some of the most important lessons of my career did not happen in a classroom.

• They came from supervisors and colleagues.
• They came from mistakes.
• They came from employees I managed.
• They came from families receiving services.
• They came from navigating difficult organizational challenges.
• They came from asking questions when I did not understand something.
• They came from stepping into positions that stretched me beyond what I already knew.

That is why I remain such a strong believer in continuing education and professional development.

Whether it is another degree, a certification, leadership training, executive coaching, conferences, reading, mentorship, or simply remaining curious, we should never become so comfortable with our experience that we stop learning.

Success Was Progressive, Not Immediate

My career did not move from entry-level professional to executive overnight.

It was progressive.

• Each role prepared me for the next one.
• Each challenge developed another leadership competency.
• Each opportunity gave me greater visibility into how organizations operate.

And every time I stepped into a position with greater responsibility, I accepted that there would be something new that I needed to learn.

That is an important part of my definition of success.

Success is not simply arriving at an executive title.

It is developing the knowledge, judgment, resilience, relationships, and experience necessary to carry the responsibility that comes with that title.

Getting to the Table Was Never Just About Me

As I progressed in my career, I became increasingly aware that being at the table carried another responsibility.

When you come from communities or experiences that have historically been underrepresented in leadership, your presence can bring a perspective that might otherwise be absent from the conversation.

But presence alone is not enough.

You have to use your voice.

I have tried to use mine to advocate for children, families, people with developmental disabilities, individuals experiencing behavioral health challenges, communities of color, people navigating poverty, and others whose experiences are often discussed in decision-making spaces without their voices actually being represented there.

For me, executive leadership became another form of giving back.

• I may not always be the person providing the direct service, but I can work to ensure that the professional providing that service has adequate resources.
• I can advocate for the program.
• I can challenge inequities.
• I can examine whether policies make sense.
• I can strengthen organizations.
• I can help develop employees.
• I can ask difficult questions.
• And I can use whatever influence I have to make sure that vulnerable and underrepresented communities remain part of the conversation when important decisions are being made.

And Now, I Want to Help Others Get to the Table

Perhaps one of the greatest evolutions in my definition of success is recognizing that getting to the table myself is no longer enough.

I want to help other people get there, too.

• I want emerging professionals to understand how organizations operate beyond their individual roles.
• I want them to understand budgets, governance, strategy, fundraising, quality, operations, and leadership.
• I want professionals—particularly those who may not initially see themselves represented in senior leadership—to understand that executive leadership can be part of their trajectory.
• And I want organizations to become more intentional about identifying, mentoring, educating, and developing the next generation of nonprofit leaders.

Because leadership pipelines do not develop accidentally.

• Someone has to invest in people.
• Someone has to explain what they were never taught.
• Someone has to create opportunities.
• And sometimes someone simply has to say, "You belong in this room."

My Definition of Success

Today, I define success differently than I might have earlier in my career.

Yes, I am proud of the degrees.

I am proud of the progression.

I am proud of the executive positions I have held.

But I am most proud of what those opportunities have allowed me to do.

• They have allowed me to advocate.
• To build.
• To develop people.
• To strengthen programs.
• To challenge systems.
• To make decisions.
• And to help organizations become better equipped to serve the people who depend on them.

I worked full time while pursuing my education full time because I believed there was somewhere I needed to go.

I continued seeking greater responsibility because I knew there were conversations I wanted to be part of.

And I pursued executive leadership because I wanted to be at the table where decisions were being made.

Today, I understand that getting to that table was never the final destination.

The real purpose was gaining the ability to use my seat, my voice, my experience, and my leadership to create opportunities and better outcomes for people who too often do not have a seat of their own.

That, for me, is what success in the nonprofit sector looks like.