The NeighborWorks Achieving Excellence Program, created for senior leaders in partnership with Harvard’s Kennedy School, is a quarter century old. That means it was high time for the reunion that was held during the NeighborWorks Training Institute in Miami Beach this month.
But these cohorts of leaders – who now number 12 cohorts and 560 graduates – have continued mentoring and supporting each other all along. They’ve met in Germany. They’ve met in Canada. They've met for morning Zooms and late-night phone calls. Because along with the teaching and coaching, the thing that has made this program so successful is the peers who go through it together.
“The connection was the most enduring part of the program,” said Marietta Rodriguez, NeighborWorks’ president & CEO and a graduate of the Achieving Excellence Cohort Five. “Those relationships don’t end when the program ends.”
Rodriguez said the program had a profound impact on her own leadership style – and on the leadership of those in the room who came to the program asking: What more can I do? “Each of you came into this program with a development challenge. You were willing to have your thinking questioned, your assumptions tested, your leadership stretched. That made a difference not only for your organizations but for the countless communities that you serve.”
Achieving Excellence has never been about simply learning a new tool or leadership technique, Rodriguez said. “It’s about taking the challenge that keeps you awake at night.” And its’ about getting the tools to address that challenge head on and with intention. “It doesn’t ask what you want to learn… It asks you: What are you prepared to change? And that’s a much more difficult question.”
Rodriguez completed her Achieving Excellence program in 2012, after spending years of working at NeighborWorks and in community development. She understood the importance of helping families become homeowners and how stable housing transformed lives and communities. “But I had also come to know that passion or believe in the mission is not enough.” Challenges
were becoming more complex even then, she said. They were asked to do more with fewer resources.
She was looking for a new approach and one that would continue adding value long after the program ended. Achieving Excellence gave her discipline and changed the way she approached leadership, she said.
She had to identify the challenge underneath the challenge. “The question was how do we build organizations that are strong enough and nimble enough to sustain that mission long term?” That meant changing a business model while staying true to purpose, she said.
The frameworks of Achieving Excellence helped her do that, she said. “We all have good ideas. But good idea and passion are not enough. Organizations need leaders who will step into the breach of leadership at really, really hard times.”
Achieving Excellence led her back the same questions:
What’s the outcome I’m trying to achieve?
What’s standing in my way?
Who do I need to involve?
Her own project evolved into what is now known as the Sustainable Business Initiative, creating business models that are more sustainable and less reliant on government funding. The program still exists today. The alumni attending the reunion represented exemplary organizations in the NeighborWorks network.
Sarah Gerecke: Still connected
Sarah Gerecke of SSG Community Solutions started with the AE program 20 years ago as part of the Blue Group – the first year for chief operating officers at large organizations. Her goal for her nonprofit at the time, NHS of NYC, was to go from reliance on gifts and charitable contributions to earned revenue. “From begging to earning,” Gerecke explained. “But I did not know that AE graduation was only the end of the beginning. There was much more journey ahead.” 
Blue Group hired their coach and continued to meet each year to practice the tools they learned in their cohort. “I have used the tools nearly every day since, in every job I’ve had,” Gerecke said.
She relied on them during her eight years with HUD’s Office of Housing Counseling when she was asked to help reorganize her division. She relied on them in her consulting work and in her teaching.
Her latest AE meeting was a trip to the Canadian Rockies with her peer group. The trip included partners and children, she said. “And the coach asked to become a member of the peer group after 15 years or so. So we stopped paying him and instead he presents his story and we ask tough questions. He still teaches us new tools.”
Her second consulting client after her time with HUD was a member of her peer group, she said. She’s worked with others, too.
“As you can imagine, we are incredibly close friends as well as AE practitioners. Our children have grown up together and some are friends. The peer group has enriched my life — and my husband’s — far more than I ever expected.”
She still uses the tools, she said.
“At this point, I am addicted to AE. I meet someone new and I can tell within three minutes if they have been through the program. For me, AE is the journey, not the destination. And after 20years, I’m still on the right bus.”
Alicia Nunez: A life of plot twists.
Alicia Nunez, CEO of Chicanos Por La Causa, also spoke during the reunion. Below are excerpts of her speech.
If you told a teenage Alicia that she would make a historic milestone by becoming the first ever Latina CEO and President for one of the largest nonprofits in the country, she would not believe you.
She would tell you she wants to be an English teacher.
She would tell you she is just a girl from a small barrio in Lincoln Heights, located in Los Angeles County, which is where I grew up.
You’d have to tell her that this story has plot twists, some chapters end with cliffhangers, and the final chapter isn’t done yet. This story doesn’t start with me, and it surely doesn’t end with me..
We are here as a result of the collective work poured into us from the people in our lives and those who came before us to get closer to a better future. We are creating a path for the generation after us to build upon our foundation…
I learned my biggest lesson in my childhood home’s front yard, which I’d like to share with you today.
My mom always had a large pot of frijoles and fresh flour tortillas ready on the stove, - and I never knew why.
I remember coming home from school one day when I was in junior high school, to see a group of people on our front lawn. There were about 10 young men…they looked tired and beat. And at the center, was my mom with that big pot of frijoles and the tortillera by her side, serving each person a plate of food.
I was confused by what was going on. I wondered if they were family or friends, but I couldn’t recognize anyone. What I later learned was that they were migrant workers who’d been traveling on the freight train and they had been stopping at my house for years.
I realized then why there was always a big pot of frijoles and fresh tortillas…
From that moment, I thought, I want to be like my mom someday. Compassionate, strong, self-aware.
I found my way to Chicanos Por La Causa. It was an accident--I initially thought it would just be temporary stop in my career pathway. But when I arrived, it felt more and more like where I needed to be.
It felt like home.
After 8 years, Nunez’s CEO asked her to be CFO. She doubted herself, but moved forward and completed several executive programs, including Achieving excellence. When she was asked to serve as interim president and CEO, she said yes right away.
The AE program helped me during my transition from CFO – to interim CEO – and officially CEO. Some of my favorite tools used were the Power Matrix, being able to map out internal and external forces and helping become strategic - being on the dance floor vs. balcony. Celebrating early wins…
There’s a hallway in the CPLC main office filled with portraits of all the past Presidents that I used to walk through every day.
With 80% of our nearly 2,000 employees being women, I would always say, “one day, there’s going to be a woman in that hallway”.
But I never thought that woman was going to be me.
A look back
Christina Deady, senior director of Leadership and Workforce Development for NeighborWorks, welcomed the group to Miami
Beach, citing statistics like the more than $18 million in assets that came from 15 organizations in a single cohort. What organizations want to see, she said, is an “increase in assets, increase in housing output, increase in production and units and clients served.”
The program began after executive directors talked to NeighborWorks America about how they wanted a way to identify what “the next level” might be for their organization and how to get there.
NeighborWorks’ Sally Digges started what is now known as Achieving Excellence, a program that just completed its 12th cohort. Graduates have come from 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Applications for the next Achieving Excellence cohort are due by Oct. 8. Visit our website for more information.
