This has become a dark place.
The CEO came from a military background and has since led another large military service organization, so the nonprofit world isn't new to him. That makes it harder to explain why he still hasn't made the transition to real organizational leadership. He operates without clear vision, and what exists isn't communicated down. He claims transparency while consistently doing the opposite.
Case in point: he mandated a return to office for a largely remote headquarters, with no relocation assistance, no job guarantees, and no severance. Remote exceptions were granted inconsistently, but what obliterated any sense of fairness was hiring an SVP from his previous organization into a fully remote leadership role, then flipping that entire team's remote status to match. Any claimed logic fell apart right there.
He paused merit, bonuses, and step increases, citing the organization's finances. That same financial hardship was later used to justify cutting jobs. Yet at an April town hall, talking about restoring them, he got so visibly over-excited that he said he'd been "kicked under the table four times." It was tactless to celebrate over money while people's jobs were supposedly on the line for lack of it. Then, two days before layoffs took effect, he opened a town hall by calling the organization financially "in a great place" and announced a one-time salary offset for those who missed out. It would be paid at the end of June, after the departing staff were gone, and was by his own description "not nearly what's deserved." A leader with any awareness would have waited until the people being cut weren't in the room. Announcing good news about money to a workforce days from losing their jobs isn't transparency, it's carelessness with people's dignity at the worst possible moment.
That carelessness with words is a pattern, and it follows him into smaller rooms, where he is routinely unprofessional — dismissive, insulting, willing to mock and single out staff in front of their peers. Any other employee would be sitting across from HR for far less. This is an organization so risk-averse that routine decisions crawl through approvals, yet its single largest unmanaged risk is the man at the top of the org chart and whatever he chooses to say next. A CEO's words carry the weight of the institution. He spends that weight recklessly, and one day the bill will come due somewhere the board can't ignore.
The layoffs themselves were handled disgracefully. People were required to sign return-to-office commitments, then told individually, in one-on-one calls, that there was no budgeted position for them. The written guidance said something else entirely. Fail to report on June 1, and it would be treated as a voluntary resignation. The inconsistency looked less like disorganization than a strategy: resignations don't trigger WARN Act notices, and they don't come with severance. Some of those same positions have since been reposted, which makes it hard to read the mandate as anything but a mechanism for turning over staff without saying so. HR should be ashamed.
Meanwhile, the rebuild is already underway: new, lower-cost hires arriving to fill the seats of those pushed out, minus the years of institutional knowledge that left with them. The people who did the work paid the price. The people responsible never have.
The C-suite, VPs, and directors have become yes-men. Early on, the Chief Human Resources Officer departed under unclear circumstances. The message was received, and whatever dissent existed disappeared. Many of these same leaders held extensions or exceptions to the return-to-office policy while the rest of the workforce absorbed it. Quite a few have since left of their own accord, likely reading the writing on the wall, but while they were here, not one of them publicly fought for the staff or for what was right. What remained was kowtowing and self-preservation. Watching people you respect go silent to protect themselves is heartbreaking. In an organization that exists to serve others, that silence is its own kind of betrayal.
The org also suffers from a culture of hierarchy and approval-seeking that predates this CEO. Basic decisions require layers of sign-off. It kills efficiency, kills innovation, and makes the organization slow when it needs to be nimble.
The mission is important. That's exactly why this is so hard to watch.
