Tips for a Positive Leadership Transition, From Outgoing Ms. Foundation CEO

While celebrating her 56th birthday last June, Ms. Foundation CEO Teresa Younger began to rethink her future. She had led the foundation for a dozen years. And she had recently completed a $100 million fundraising campaign, attracting support from the Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, and Susan Thompson Buffett foundations and others to fund her organization’s gender and racial equity work. Now she was ready for something different. She wanted to step down to clear the path for new leadership and to find new avenues for her own pursuit of social justice.

“I actually woke up on my birthday in June of last year recognizing that if I wanted to make a professional change, I needed to do it before I got ‘aged out’ of the process,” she said. “If I don’t get out of the way for the next line of leadership, they will not be able to step into an organization like the Ms. Foundation.”

When she was tapped to lead the organization in 2014, Younger seemed a natural choice for taking its work into a new era for women’s and civil rights. The Ms. Foundation was established in 1973 by Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Marlo Thomas to help fund grassroots groups focused on women and girls across race and class. Those causes were dear to Younger, whose career as an activist and organizational strategist had focused on lifting barriers for women and other marginalized groups.

Prior to joining the Ms. Foundation, Younger led the Connecticut legislature’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, where she worked on women’s health and economic empowerment. She was also the first woman and the first African American to serve as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut. 

Younger came to the Ms. Foundation with ambitions to increase the endowment and make the organization a grant-making powerhouse capable of funding more groups. She has achieved that. The foundation’s assets grew from $42 million at the start of Younger’s tenure to $114 million in 2024, according to that year’s tax return. Younger said she feels confident the Ms. Foundation is in a good financial position. And when she considers the organization’s leaders, many of whom are women of color she hired, she believes the foundation will be in good hands when she leaves.

Younger recently spoke with the Chronicle about her achievements, her decision to step down, and why it is important for her to demonstrate a positive transition out of an organization.

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

How have you helped to strengthen the Ms. Foundation during your tenure? What are you most proud of?

Within two or three months of starting at the Ms. Foundation, I remember saying to a donor, ‘I think our endowment should be $100 million.’ And at the time, that donor said to me, ‘Don’t you think you’re being too ambitious?’ 

We were not. We raised over $100 million in our Creating the Future We Deserve campaign. 

I expanded the staff and now the entire leadership team is made up of  women of color. We’ve been able to increase the number of grantee partners. We’ve been able to increase the amount of grants we make. We’ve been able to deepen relationships with funders and within the philanthropic community. All of those things have positioned the foundation to be in conversations, to be sitting at tables and bringing folks to tables, whether it’s other women’s funds, whether it’s our grantee partner organizations, whether it’s our partners in the field. And we’ve been able to highlight things like the lack of funding that is going to women and girls of color in the Midwest and in the South.

How were you and your team able to raise more than $106 million through that campaign in 2023 and 2024?

I have a really dynamic team of people. Our fundraising team is six people, including our administrative staff. Fundraising can take a lot of energy, but one of the things we’ve been able to do at Ms. is build deep relationships, which are not just one-off. This is 12 years of building relationships with people and creating a stable and present force. I want to make sure that I help transition the organization with the next CEO and introduce them to the next line of  donors, grantee partners, and our partnerships with other folks in philanthropy.

You took a three-month sabbatical at the start of last year. Did that time off help you decide to leave the foundation?

What the sabbatical did for me, is it gave me rest to clear my head. Initially, coming out of sabbatical, I felt like, ‘I’m in it till I die. I am back. I am ready.’ But it also gave me the bandwidth to think about other things that I enjoy doing and places where I want my voice to be. I think the sabbatical gave me room to give myself permission to see that the organization can stay strong, and I can move on.

Many women of color were promoted to leadership positions at foundations and nonprofits after the racial reckoning of 2020. Now we’re seeing opposition to those kinds of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Was that on your mind while making this decision?

I hadn’t actually reflected on it from that point of view. I do think that the past five to six years have been really hard on leaders, particularly leaders of color. That’s not my rationale. I want to go, and I want to leave Ms. better than I found it. That’s the case right now. It’s in really good shape. 

I also recognize that there is no good time to ever leave. But the foundation is strong. It’s got great leadership. It’s relatively financially stable. The foundation’s reputation is really strong within the philanthropic community.

I’m 56, and I know I have at least one, maybe two more big job challenges in me. I’m at that point where either I decide I’m going to stay for another 10 years or I decide I’m going to transition out. Age bias is real. And I’m of the generation that, for a long time, banged up against leaders who were not ready to leave. They were going to stay until they retired, and I don’t want to do that.

You’re set to depart in June. What do you think your final months will look like?

I’m trying to figure out how to slow down at a time when we’re in an absolute crisis. I come from the Midwest. I grew up in North Dakota, so everything that’s happening in Minnesota is so close. It’s where my best friend lives. It’s where my sibling lives. It’s where I have a strong community. We’re connected with the women’s foundation out there. That is very real. 

We are releasing our third Pocket Change report, which examines funding disparities for groups led by women and girls of color. Those reports have been instrumental in changing how philanthropy funds and holds other funders accountable for supporting those needs, especially when we’re trying to preserve a democracy. 

I’ve always said that I want to show people what a positive transition looks like for a woman of color in an organization that has a very diverse national board, very diverse staff, amazing partners all across the country and globally. I want to show that it doesn’t always have to be traumatic. I want to do it with joy, and I want to do it with intention.

We’re currently seeing opposition to and policy reversals on DEI and women’s and reproductive rights. Are you worried about stepping down in a moment like this?

I spent years doing public policy work. There’s far more political policy work I’d like to see. And fortunately, the Ms. Foundation, under my leadership, has been able to start a 501(c)(4) and we were able to move half a million dollars under that entity last year. I have been able to put little stamps of my interest into the work that we are doing here at the foundation. That will hold. 

I think on some level that if I’m not running the Ms. Foundation, I can think more broadly on not just what the Ms. Foundation funds, but on the solutions that I can help be a part of. I’d love to lean towards problem solving. I’ve been really fortunate. I have lots of experiences that I’ve been able to bring to Ms. and that I will take into my next role.

I’m stepping down. I’m not stepping away. I’m not retiring, and I’m not silencing my voice. I don’t yet have a plan for what’s next. But there’s a bunch of other things out there.