André Chung
Dear Subscriber,
Tycely Williams is a familiar name to many fundraisers because of her prominent role as a leader of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ effort to stomp out gender bias and sexual harassment in development offices nationwide.
But Williams (above) has also been working hard to
promote racial and gender equity as she builds her own team at America’s Promise Alliance. She was more determined than ever to do that after she encountered bias as chief development officer at the Red Cross chapter that serves the Washington metropolitan region.
Not only was she concerned that the organization’s fundraising tactics had been designed by white people to work for white people, but the critiques of her leadership style seemed to be based on prejudice, she told my colleague Eden Stiffman. First she was described as too aggressive. When she took a different tack, she was told she lacked leadership skills and wasn’t competent.