Speaker: Dan Leroy, President and CEO of United Way of Asheville
Introduce yourself by sharing your name, organization, and title.
Dan Leroy: Hello, my name is Dan Leroy and I'm the president and CEO of United Way of Asheville in Bunkum County, and I got to work with Tracey as a new leader of this organization, just hired for the job, and I brought her in as a thought partner and as a coach to think specifically about how we could really center equity and specifically racial equity in our new strategic plan. Tracey came and participated in a lot of the planning for the planning. She attended staff retreats, she helped perform a gap analysis where we tried to really understand where we were coming from, where we wanted to go, and what it would take to get there. She helped us cast a vision for the future for what racial equity could look like in our organization, and she helped inspire us really to take the journey that we're still on today. Tracey is unique in that she is an excellent listener. She offers incredible insights and encouragement and perspective really wherever an organization is in their equity journey. She's not afraid to push organizations and organization leaders to think harder and push harder when it comes to their equity initiatives and she really understands the larger landscape of philanthropy. She works really hard to pull in her broad breath of knowledge and experience in the sector to offer insights that can be helpful in the organizations that she works with. Some specific achievements that Tracey helped us with, she helped us refine our strategic plan with equity at the center, she helped us develop, and facilitated a process to develop a community engagement strategy for an organization from beginning to end, and she helped us to develop a new structure called an equity change team that still exists within the organization today and is really a central fixture in our ongoing equity work. Tracey is a real gem. I feel very lucky to know her. I feel lucky to have connected with her at a really pivotal time in my life, in my career, and in the life cycle of my organization, and we truly would not be where we are today without Tracey Green-Washington's support.
