Pros
- Staff are generally passionate, thoughtful, dedicated to the mission, and committed to collaboration and progress; have never worked with a more inspiring or supportive team
- Work and organizational structure present opportunities to collaborate with diverse partners from across the world, both inside and outside NWF, which benefits the work and one's professional growth
- True commitment to work/life balance, evidenced in both policies and messaging from leadership at multiple levels; incredibly valuable, especially for working parents and people navigating health and family issues
- Teams are doing good and important work that's making a difference
Cons
- Limited potential for upward mobility - organization made welcome strides in recent years to standardize performance reviews, position descriptions, and salary bands, but rollout has been slow and confusing; in an attempt to put everyone on a level playing field leadership has blocked the ability of teams to support growth of deserving individuals; this prevents NWF from actually valuing and nurturing talent
- Lack of accountability and strategic, values-based decision-making from executive-level leadership - leaders are great at couching decisions/updates in the language of humility and transparency, but outcomes and process is often anything but; staff are consistently met with defensiveness when they raise legitimate concerns about lack of clarity or shifts in programmatic structure that are unaligned with organization's strategic plan; this devalues the expertise of staff and fuels a demoralizing work environment; actions of CEO and supporting staff sometimes seem to be more interested in protecting CEO's potential future political career than the well-being of the organization they lead