Above: Nearly 30 women participate in leadership training during the 2016 Women’s Network of Northeast Ohio’s second Career Leadership Institute class. Credit: ©2016 Women’s Network NEO – Shane Wynn Photography.

Kirsten Lino is the board president of Women’s Network of Northeast Ohio and a vice president with FirstMerit Bank. Knight Foundation is supporting the organization’s efforts to expand its women’s leadership programs and build capacity to reduce reliance on volunteers and sustain the organization for the long term.

Who will lead?

It’s been a key topic of discussion here in Akron, Ohio, for the last several years. The discussion, important enough to spark a special series over the last year in the Akron Beacon Journal, often centers on the significant shift in leadership that is happening in our region, which is expected to accelerate in the next several years.

We are already seeing significant changes. The long-standing Akron mayor (28 years in office) abruptly left office in mid-2015, and a new mayor and cabinet are in place. A major university and health care system have also seen longtime leaders retire. Other key government, nonprofit and corporate leaders are leaving their posts or retiring after long tenures. This shift in power is leaving many area residents wondering who is next in line to carry the torch and move our community forward.

This shift in leadership is intimidating for some. But at Women’s Network we are embracing this change. As a 40-year-old organization with women representing a wide variety of businesses and nonprofits, we have chosen to harness the power and knowledge of our membership to develop new and innovative ways to prepare women to fill leadership roles and even start new businesses that will create jobs. We are making a dramatic shift from an organization that predominantly offered structured networking for women into an organization dedicated to formal professional education, leadership training and entrepreneurial support. 

In some ways, we are acting like a startup even though we are a seasoned organization. We have taken an entrepreneurial approach to growth – finding a need and turning the idea into something people want. Our local leadership development programs were one of the top things women and employers sought, but no one offered.

But like many startups, we had great ideas, but limited resources to grow. We had only one paid staff member, a part-time program administrator, with strategy and operations driven by a volunteer board. We began to realize it was time to think and operate differently to get to where we wanted to be – training current and future women leaders.

Knight Foundation has been critical to this process and has become a valued partner in offering our programs to women in our region. The foundation not only helped us make valuable contacts and develop our programs, but it invested in us financially so we could go through a formal strategic planning process in 2015. This process reframed how we think about our organizational goals.

Knight’s recent investment of more than $190,000 will be transformational for us. Through our strategic planning, we learned having a high-caliber organization run by volunteers was remarkable, but not sustainable. We knew if we lost key members, the organization would likely suffer.  

This funding will help us build an infrastructure to sustain us for years to come. It will help us develop a strong brand to market our programs to women, provide us with key staff members to run our day-to-day operations and free our board to focus on developing strategy and partnerships important to our success.

But ultimately, the grant will help women who have the desire to lead and run businesses. It will give them the skills to lead and the confidence to answer the question “who will lead?” We hope the answer from our members and participants will be a resounding, “I will.”