Resources
A compilation of some of my favorite books, podcasts and websites that have helped shape the way I think about leadership, nonprofits, and business development writ large.
Books
Leadership and Organizational Management
Reinventing Organizations - Frederic Laloux
Laloux studies and explains how so-called “Teal Organizations” - ones developed without hierarchies and with the expressed goal of encouraging wholeness and transparency - work and function.
The Happy Healthy Nonprofit - Beth Kanter and Aliza Sherman
Two experienced nonprofit leaders talk about the causes of burnout and how to prevent it.
Sociology
Quiet - Susan Cain
Cain discusses how most of society is built to encourage and exalt extroversion and how introverts can and should use their particular form of knowledge and power.
So You Want To Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Oluo breaks down the basic tenets of how race and racism is integrated into our society and why, exactly, you can’t touch her hair or say the “n" word.
Philanthropy
Decolonizing Wealth - Edgar Villanueva
Villanueva has spent his professional career as a Native American in the very white and siloed world of philanthropy and describes what he’s learned and how it should change.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - INCITE!
Often considered the ur-text of radical nonprofit thought, originally published in 2007, the INCITE! team lays out the ways the sector is flawed, limited, and racist.
Winners Take All - Anand Giridharadas
Giridharadas considers about how the entire concept of philanthropy was created and is sustained by the wealthy and therefore is disincentivized to create real systemic change that would, as a result, reduce their wealth and power.
Podcasts
Managing Culture and Teams
Ask A Manager
No longer putting out new episodes but worth going through the catalogue as Alison Green counsels individuals through their questions/concerns and gives practical advice about how to manage complicated situations.
WorkLife with Adam Grant
Grant is “an organizational psychologist who studies how to make work not suck” and interviews a variety of experts and leaders about how they have created healthy, functioning work environments.
Entrepreneurship
Without Fail
Gimlet Media co-founder Alex Blumberg interviews other entrepreneurs and leaders about the ways that they have failed and succeeded.
ZigZag
Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant quit their jobs at WYNC in 2018 and launched a new company to talk about the world of tech and to track their new roles as female entrepreneurs. Wildly informative about things like blockchain and bitcoin, poignant, and deeply relatable.
Workplace Oppression & Working Toward Liberation
Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace
Jeannie Yandel and Eula Scott Bynoe explain that yes, your workplace is also sexist (no matter where you are), how that appears, and what to do about it.
The Ethical Rainmaker
Michelle Shireen Muri talks with guests about the racist roots of the nonprofit sector, how it appears in philanthropy and within organizations, and what we can do to change it.
