Leadership Transition Community

Having orchestrated their own transitions in 2020, Christa and Scott have worked to uncover the research, tools, funding, support, and shared practices available for the complex practice of social sector leadership succession. Leadership transition feels like such a taboo subject that many Founders and Long-Term CEOs fear that alerting and involving others to a possible leadership change will be destabilizing. We are looking to change that narrative, ensuring that leadership transition can be a transformative process.

Left to go it alone during one of the most important stages of organization’s development leaves many leaders with no choice but to reinvent the wheel. In a cloak of silence and isolation, it can be challenging for leaders to uncouple personal identity from their organization, and ensure the organization they love and have built can thrive into the future.

The Leadership Transition Community aims to write a new story, building a community of social sector Founders and Long-Term CEOs to support one another. Current offerings include: 

  • A drop in peer community for Founders/Long-Term CEOs consisting of resources and monthly conversations;

  • Structured cohorts of peers to support each other during transition planning and execution;

  • Individualized coaching and consulting on leadership transitions;

  • Ongoing research on emerging practices and resources in social sector leadership transitions.

Meet the Team

 


  • Co-Founder

    Christa is a Coach and Consultant for leaders, individuals, and organizations around the world.

    In 1998, Christa founded Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) which she created with the help of incarcerated youth. For 22 years, she built and scaled FLY serving as its CEO. After planning and executing her own succession, Christa stepped down as FLY’s CEO into a time-bound Founder in Residence Role paving the way for her internal successor to take the helm. Along the way she captured lessons learned which she has shared at various webinars and trainings offered by organizations such as Bridgespan, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Ashoka, Echoing Green, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the Emerson Collective.

    Christa holds a B.S. in Sociology and Law and Society from the University of California Santa Barbara where she was a two-time Academic All-American basketball player. She graduated with honors from Stanford Law School, and is a member of the California Bar. While serving as FLY’s CEO, Christa completed Harvard Business School’s Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management and was selected to be a Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford University. She was inducted as an Ashoka Fellow, one of the first in the field of Juvenile Justice in the US, and into the American Leadership Forum (class XXV) which brings together corporate, government, and nonprofit leaders.

    Christa has served as a board member for Stanford’s National Haas Advisory Board, Thrive, The Alliance of Nonprofits for San Mateo County, and Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits. Christa was also a Senior Fellow and Special Advisor to Stanford’s Center for Racial Justice.

    Christa is certified in Instinctive Drives, a leadership tool and coaching approach used with top corporate and nonprofit leaders around the world to unlock what they to be at their best in all areas of their lives.

    Christa brings to her work various perspectives she gained over the last two decades. As she built FLY she was also a medical advocate for a husband with a chronic illness, an educational advocate for a daughter with numerous learning differences, and a coach and co-founder of a youth basketball program. Committed to her continuous growth, development, and care, she is relentlessly curious, practices mindfulness daily, and takes an annual weeklong quest in nature to stay centered, grounded, present, and grateful.

 
 


  • Co-Founder

    Scott Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently leading an initiative focused on exploring, researching, and convening a pro-democracy conservative agenda in the US, organizing convenings focused on bridging long-term and short-term fixes for democratic reform, and supporting cities in efforts to promote civic participation and democratic engagement.

    At SNF Agora, he also launched Democracy Moves, an international network of youth activists pushing for democratic change, which is now part of Restless Development, and helped Johns Hopkins University in exploring its own role as a beacon of civic engagement and democracy. He has also advised USAID on youth civic and political engagement.

    Warren is the founder of the national civics education organization Generation Citizen, where he currently serves on the Board of Directors. He served as the organization’s CEO for more than 11 years, helping grow Generation Citizen to become one of the preeminent civics education organizations in the country, promoting action civics across diverse geographies through best-in-class programming and concrete policy change. Warren published a book in 2019, Generation Citizen: The Power of Youth in Politics, and was named an Echoing Green Fellow in 2010, and a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow in 2012.

    In addition to currently teaching at JHU, Warren has taught courses focused on social entrepreneurship and democratic erosion at Brown University, Tufts University, Stanford University, and the University of California San Diego. He continues to write on subjects ranging from youth political engagement to African politics to sports, and has been published and featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, San Diego Union Tribune, Sports Illustrated, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Providence Journal.