A Youth Group Makes Its Leadership More Diverse
First leader from an affiliate organization also wants to focus on serving member groups
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
August 7, 2013 | Read Time: 1 minute
Since Charles Pierson took the helm as chief executive of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America a year ago, he has expanded the organization’s management team from six people to 12 and sought to ensure the new leaders add to the diversity of the senior ranks.
“Seventy percent of the children that we serve are children of color,” he says. “So it’s really important for us just not to be in the community but to be of the community.”
Mr. Pierson is the national organization’s first chief executive who has previously led a local affiliate. He was chief executive of Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, for more than nine years. He has added two other former affiliate leaders to the national organization’s management team.
“We’re creating a national organization with the understanding that we’re serving the affiliates,” says Mr. Pierson. “We’re serving them as our customers because they’re the ones that are serving the kids.”
In the video below, Mr. Pierson talks about both of those efforts.
