In six months, the Community Food Club grew by 47 percent. AJ Fossel had six people on staff. She was stocking onions in the back because there was nobody else. A trusted teammate told her she was going to leave.

AJ sat in her office after hours and cried.

She knew she needed to hire. She also knew that meant dipping into reserves, having a hard conversation with the board, and asking for help in a way that felt like admitting she didn't have all the answers. She took her board chair — who came from grocery — out to breakfast, because she couldn't leave the store at lunch.

This conversation covers what she brought to that board meeting, why being transparent with donors about exactly where the food club stood built more trust than a polished plan would have, and what the board authorized that finally let her lead without second-guessing every dollar.

She also talks about a member advisory council that makes calls she would not have made herself, and why charging a monthly fee matters — it turns members into customers.

AJ Fossel is Executive Director of the Community Food Club in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a nonprofit grocery store serving households across Kent County, with $4.5 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

Three days into his tenure, Will Jones was asked to sign a letter moving $150,000 from Thompson's endowment to cover a $200,000 payroll.

Two weeks later, the same letter was back on his desk.

Thompson was spending about $5 million a year more than it brought in, and its leaders were telling staff the model could not work any other way.

Will concluded the organization had more people than work. On a three-day beach trip with his family, he told his wife, "I know what I need to do." He would take a reduction in force to the board, and if they would not back him, this was not the right mission for him.

A board member asked whether it could wait six months. Will said it could, but in six months the number would be 50. The board backed him.

This conversation covers what it cost him to be "the heavy" in a leadership team that was "okay with the mission shutting down," and how Thompson innovated to serve more kids that were falling through cracks in the system elsewhere.

He also talks about why he stopped his executive team from voting on decisions, why leaders who can grow but don't want to are the worst fit for a growing organization, and why nearly all his peers are for-profit leaders.

Will Jones is President and CEO of Thompson Child & Family Focus, a 140-year-old youth-serving organization in the Charlotte area that works in five states. Thompson reported $49.4 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025.

The hard calls, the ones that are 51/49, are supposed to land on the CEO's desk. Romanita Hairston warns that without a clear escalation framework, you'll be doing the wrong work.

"You can be making 51/49 decisions, but not the most consequential ones," she says.

One of her first moves after becoming CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust in 2022 was a strategy decision. The Trust affirmed its identity as a capacity-building institution and cut the sectors it served in half, from about 80 to 38. A second review narrowed that list by roughly half again.

Her reasoning runs through the whole conversation: "Strategic intent always exceeds strategic capacity, no matter how large you are as a foundation."

We talk about how she builds strategy from principle-level choices down to business plans, and why decision speed depends more on business rhythm than on layers of management. She also explains how her team deals with a question that no guideline covers, and why feedback runs all year long.

She also shares what she tells new CEOs, and what books she re-reads.

Romanita Hairston is CEO of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a 50-year-old foundation that invests in nonprofits across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. She has also led her own consulting practice and previously served at World Vision.