The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

Adam Jeske
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Non-Profit

Nonprofit CEOs carry decisions they can't fully discuss with their board, their team, or their peers. So they carry them alone. Each week, Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, sits down with a nonprofit CEO to go inside the decisions they carry: the agonizing restructure, the wonky board dynamic, the moment that defined their tenure. Adam has been in over 230 of these conversations. The patterns are striking and valuable. This podcast surfaces them so you can lead with the perspective most CEOs never get. For weekly patterns, synthesis, and peer intelligence between episodes, subscribe to The Nonprofit CEO Briefing at nonprofitCEO.com. 

  1. 3d ago

    029 What Am I Even Doing Here? | Prison Fellowship President & CEO Heather Rice-Minus

    Heather Rice-Minus walked out of a board meeting without an important approval.  She had presented a new mission and vision for Prison Fellowship, built over a year of listening in prisons and long work with her leadership team. The lawyers wordsmithed. Her board chair asked whether people would understand it. The words went back on the shelf. She went home and sat with her husband, wondering what she had signed up for. Four months later, at her first board meeting as CEO, she put the same words back on the screen. She had sent a memo in advance explaining why each one was chosen. The vote to approve was unanimous. This conversation covers what happened in between, including the January meeting where she asked her leadership team to tell her what to change in the draft, and the cascading decisions that followed the vote. She also talks about the board selection process she has been rebuilding, why she would rather have 13 board members than the maximum of 21, the parental leave policy she announced in her first all-staff meeting, and why the people slightly askew from your vision are the hardest ones to see. Heather Rice-Minus is President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving people in prison, their families, and those coming home. Prison Fellowship reported $70.3 million in revenue in fiscal year 2025 and is celebrating its 50th year in 2026.

    029 What Am I Even Doing Here? | Prison Fellowship President & CEO Heather Rice-Minus

  2. Sep 1

    028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey

    Barry Corey is starting his twentieth year as president of Biola University. He says he is on his third presidency at the same institution. Early on, he hired a senior leader he liked and respected. Years later the university had moved and the role had moved with it. Barry agonized for weeks over a decision he already knew was inevitable, and when he walked in to deliver it, the office started to spin and he nearly passed out.  That decision, and what it cost to make, sits at the center of this conversation. Barry has also written a book, Necessary Burdens, with contributing author John Townsend, on the fourteen burdens carried by the one person at the top of an organization. His argument is that those burdens turn into assets once a leader stops reading them as evidence of weakness. This conversation covers why the top leader personifies the organization and absorbs its criticism as personal rejection, the distinction he draws between wanting to "be president" and wanting to "do president," and how fifteen years of retreats with a small group of other presidents has sustained him in the work. He also talks about the T.S. Eliot line he leads by, the five things he told his board he would do himself and delegate to no one, and why he calls it the president's office and never his own. Barry Corey is president of Biola University, a 5,500-student university in Southern California. His book Necessary Burdens, written with John Townsend, releases today.

    028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey

  3. Aug 25

    027 Weather the Storm? Or Walk Away? | Growing Hope Globally President and CEO Kaitlyn Slate

    Kaitlyn Slate stepped into her first CEO role knowing she was very different from her predecessor.  The board wanted her to diversify revenue. The staff wanted her to understand who they were. And the farmers who had anchored the organization's model for 26 years were in the most difficult agricultural economy in recent memory.  Kaitlyn had to decide whether to chase a quick win or stay true to a model that was severely strained. This conversation covers how she worked through the tension between diversifying revenue and protecting mission identity, how she thinkis about the farming communities at the heart of their work, and what a pilot program is teaching her about expanding the donor base without drifting. She also talks about why the loneliness of the CEO role surprised her, plus what she carries from degrees in historic preservation into how she thinks about organizational identity. Kaitlyn Slate is President and CEO of Growing Hope Globally, a 26-year-old membership-based food security organization working with 13 partner organizations globally.

    027 Weather the Storm? Or Walk Away? | Growing Hope Globally President and CEO Kaitlyn Slate

  4. Aug 18

    026 Do We Pull the Plug on a 50-Year Program? | Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson

    Jews for Jesus had been sending staff to present to churches for 50 years, more than 1000/year. Pastors invited them in. Churches put them on the schedule. People started to give.  Then the invitations started declining, and the costs kept rising.  Aaron Abramson stepped into the CEO role and knew a reckoning was coming. He had been in the organization for 25 years, including a stretch as COO. The question was not whether to act, but when and how much. In his second year, he pulled his executive team offsite and put everything on the table. They talked about radical options. They talked about doing nothing.  They landed somewhere in between: cut the department nearly in half, keep the engine at its core running, and carve out budget to find a new relationship with churches. There was a restructure, and there were layoffs. The decision involved people who had been with the mission for 20 years or more.  Aaron shares what it took to hold that, why he needed the whole team riding with him rather than just signing off, and what he has learned about communicating a hard decision to boards, major donors, senior staff, and those in the field, all with different stakes in what they hear. Aaron Abramson is CEO of Jews for Jesus, a global organization with nearly 300 staff. He's also the author of Mission Design: Leading Your Ministry Through Organizational and Cultural Change.

    026 Do We Pull the Plug on a 50-Year Program? | Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson

  5. Aug 11

    025 He Got a $60 Million Gift. Then He Left | Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono

    He got the largest gift in his organization's history. Then he left anyway. Nick Grono had been employee number one at the Freedom Fund since 2014, the only leader the anti-slavery organization had ever known, and he had already decided to step down at the end of the year. Then, in late 2025, an unexpected $60 million arrived from MacKenzie Scott, roughly three times the organization's annual budget. Everything that made leaving hard suddenly got harder. This conversation covers what made him go ahead anyway, why he spent months quietly reducing staff and slowing spending before that gift ever arrived, and what he believes a departing CEO owes the person who comes next. He also shares a world exclusive: the new nonprofit he is launching to back the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Nick is candid about the rest of the load. What Arthur Brooks and Richard Rohr taught him about the second half of a career. How he trained himself to stop deciding unilaterally and pull his leadership team into almost everything. And the quarterly all-staff call where any employee can ask him anything, anonymously, and "I don't know" became one of his most useful answers. Nick Grono is the CEO of the Freedom Fund, a global anti-slavery organization working across 10 countries on a roughly $20 million budget. They work alongside and on behalf of the estimated 50 million people trapped in forced labor, trafficking, and forced marriage. He is the author of How to Lead Nonprofits, and he steps down at the end of 2026 after 13 years.

    025 He Got a $60 Million Gift. Then He Left | Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono

  6. Aug 4

    024 Treating Complaints as Gifts | World Renew Executive Director Carol Bremer-Bennett

    Carol Bremer-Bennett sensed there were meetings before the meeting and meetings after the meeting.  The initiatives she was pushing kept stalling, and she couldn't get people to say what they really thought. So about halfway through her tenure, she brought in a culture coach and ran the Lencioni five dysfunctions assessment. Trust came back yellow. Every other layer of the pyramid came back red. Not one green. (That's bad.) It took her breath away. But Carol decided to be thankful for it. This conversation covers her decision to build a culture of psychological safety from the top down, starting with herself, and why treating complaints, concerns, and hard feedback as gifts instead of threats became the most consequential choice she made as a leader.  It's also about what the roughly year-long delay cost her before she found the courage to act. Carol also talks about the structural change the culture work required, how a flat organization once left her supervising as many as 18 people directly (that's also bad), and why she told staff to not be loyal to her. Carol Bremer-Bennett is U.S. Executive Director of World Renew, a Christian relief and development organization working in more than 20 countries, with $18.3 million in U.S. revenue in fiscal year 2025.

    024 Treating Complaints as Gifts | World Renew Executive Director Carol Bremer-Bennett

  7. Jul 28

    023 Did I Just Completely Mess That Up? | Abara Executive Director Sami DiPasquale

    Sami DiPasquale put three border properties under contract in the same week. Abara had received its 501c3 status the month before. He had no money, but he moved anyway. Abara is a nonprofit in El Paso that works on both sides of the US-Mexico border, in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, creating spaces for connection, belonging, and peace across deep divides.  The three properties sat right against the border fence, on a piece of land Sami calls one of the most historically significant in the Americas, five and a half acres of historic buildings that could become the physical hub of the work.  He'd wanted the land for years. It had never been for sale. Then, a month after Abara finally became its own legal organization, all three parcels listed within a week of each other. This conversation covers how Sami structured private loans and LLCs to close the deals before Abara could even legally receive tax-deductible gifts, why he was nearly certain before the moment ever arrived, and the leadership lesson he wishes he'd learned earlier. He also explains why a book about leading without authority in a WWII internment camp is the most formational leadership read he can recommend. Sami DiPasquale is founder and executive director of Abara, a border peacebuilding nonprofit in El Paso, Texas. He has lived and worked in El Paso for more than 20 years, and much of Abara's work grew out of an organization he led there previously.

    023 Did I Just Completely Mess That Up? | Abara Executive Director Sami DiPasquale

  8. Jul 21

    022 Ending Our Only Recurring Revenue | World Hope International President & CEO Jenn Peterson

    World Hope had run a child sponsorship program for 30 years. Jenn Petersen was one year into her CEO tenure.  The program was declining, the administrative lift was high, and it was no longer serving donors, field teams, or communities the way anyone had hoped. It was also the only recurring revenue World Hope had, and it funded a narrow slice of the work. Jenn spent six months listening before she decided. She talked to the field teams, to the sponsors, to the people the program was meant to serve, and to peer organizations that had made the same shift before her. In the Philippines, a pastor who partners with World Hope sat her team down and told them, without any prompting, the exact thing she needed to hear. Then she had to tell the sponsors. Jenn talks about the hardest moment of the transition: a 96-year-old man who came to a church service with oxygen in his nose, handed her a check for his sponsored child, and left her wondering how they could tell him at all. This conversation covers why donors accept the logic of a change like this and grieve it anyway, what it took to move her team from fear to ownership, why she walked people through the change slowly instead of ripping the bandaid off, what she calls the messy middle, and what she has learned about her own identity in the seat. Jenn Petersen is President and CEO of World Hope International, a Christian relief and development organization working in clean water and sanitation, global health, and protection. She came to the role from International Justice Mission, as well as pastoring a church in NYC.

    022 Ending Our Only Recurring Revenue | World Hope International President & CEO Jenn Peterson
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Nonprofit CEOs carry decisions they can't fully discuss with their board, their team, or their peers. So they carry them alone. Each week, Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, sits down with a nonprofit CEO to go inside the decisions they carry: the agonizing restructure, the wonky board dynamic, the moment that defined their tenure. Adam has been in over 230 of these conversations. The patterns are striking and valuable. This podcast surfaces them so you can lead with the perspective most CEOs never get. For weekly patterns, synthesis, and peer intelligence between episodes, subscribe to The Nonprofit CEO Briefing at nonprofitCEO.com. 

Information

  • Creator
    Adam Jeske
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Nonprofit CEO Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

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