-: My favorite part has been meeting people in the community.
Within this role, I've really had the opportunity
to meet people that I would have never met
and to form relationships with some amazing people,
as well as relationships with awesome nonprofit leaders
throughout the Charlottesville community.
There's hundreds of nonprofits here.
And really getting to know the people who
are doing the difficlt work that is leading a nonprofit,
and just seeing them be passionate about their work
is something that I've really enjoyed.
Being an executive director and working
in the nonprofit sector, much like being a teacher
or a social worker, it's very easy to get burned out.
You can google and find tons of articles
about executive directors that quit
within the first two years because the job is
really draining, and a lot of times, you don't really have
as much ease in drawing the boundaries between
when you finish work and when you kinda go home
and decompress for the day.
A lot of those lines really bleed together.
And so because of that, lots of nonprofit leaders
don't take care of themselves.
They lack that self-care, they lack that mental
and emotional stability.
And so that's really a difficult part of this role,
is because it is such a personable field,
and a lot of us do the work that we do because
we're passionate and personally connected to the mission.
It's very hard sometimes to know when to step away,
and know when to take time for yourself
and not work until midnight.