Dear CNE Community –
After 15 years in conversation, and of learning and growth together, this is my last executive director note to you. The last of anything gives it weight and gives one pause, but marks a beginning too. A beginning of new leadership at CNE, full of possibility. To our members, my colleagues, and the many partners and collaborators who joined with me to build this vibrant community of practice that is CNE, I can’t wait to see what you do next with it.
Because what we surely know now that we didn’t fully at the beginning of this journey is that as community builders, we are each other’s teachers, the wisdom is always right here in the room, and our collective voice is beautiful and powerful.
Nonprofits at their best reflect who we are as a society, what we care about, what we want to change, our aspirations for the future. They are foundational to our democracy, bringing us together to advocate for what’s right and to build communities where everyone can thrive. And this:
Equitable, thriving, and just communities powered by healthy nonprofits is a vision worth striving for.
If you know me you know that I welcome change. I will be staying on as a CNE strategic advisor in the short term, and staying open to what’s next. I always will be drawn to mission-driven work because as a colleague I admire, Martize Tolbert, says so well, “Community work is the best work.”
As a lover of words and an appreciator of the power in how we wield them, I leave you with the last lines of Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, a poem that I return to over and over in this work:
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
With so much gratitude –
Cristine