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- [00:00]
Cherise Harrison
Hearing these stories, it was just so. I think I was just kind of trained to love and understand and to be able to apply history and to look at it not only from just the factual things, but to hear from the people who experienced it has always framed how much I absolutely adored history.
- [00:16]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and changemakers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Cherise Harrison is the Assistant Vice President of Advancement Services and Prospect Management at California State University, Sacramento. A leader in philanthropy and data equity, she spent over a decade redefining how nonprofits approach prospect research to reduce bias and build more inclusive fundraising practices. Shareese also serves as president elect of APRA. We spoke about her journey from Washington, D.C. to to California and everything in between. You're a fourth generation Washingtonian. For those who don't know what that means, tell us.
- [01:04]
Cherise Harrison
I will. I am extraordinarily proud to be from Washington, dc. I grew up there. My formative years were there. I went to grad school at Georgetown. My great grandfather was born in Washington, D.C. and I think one thing a lot of people don't recognize of how a unique experience it is growing up somewhere like Washington, D.C. washington, D.C. in its name, it's a district, it's not a part of a state. So how you exist within the city, how you move around your schools. And when I grew up in D.C. it was 90% African American. So also for myself being very formative, growing up for my own identities, I saw excellence and success in people that look like me constantly. So there was never a oh well, you have to worry about this or worry about that because of your skin color, your ethnicity, or even your gender because you saw it all the time. And being in DC, having such an experience of working with people who are in politics a lot. So I have family members, friends who work in the federal government. My great grandmother was actually the maiden housekeeper for Dean Atchison, who was the Secretary of State for Harry Truman. My great grandfather was a landscaper in the John F. Kennedy White House. There are so many connections. My mom was a retired FOIA officer for Amtrak. It's like there's a lot of people who are just connected to all of these spaces and things. And you have so much of an appreciation for what our country is by living there and being there. Whenever I go home to visit, I see the Capitol Building. When I visit family, I see the monuments. And I have so much pride to be from somewhere like Washington, D.C. and having that formative upbringing in that area.
- [03:04]
Jay Frost
The reactions you get to that from people outside may be different, though. You live in California now, right?
- [03:11]
Cherise Harrison
I do. I currently live in Sacramento, so I'm in a different capital. And it's. It's funny. When I first moved to Sacramento, everyone told me I had to absolutely see the Capitol building because it's so beautiful. Not knowing that I see the Capitol building at least twice a year when I go back home to D.C. but it is beautiful here in California. And the way that people here experience politics and think about it is different than in D.C. because with D.C. you have a lot of turnover from party to party, a lot of transitory people. Whereas California, it is not a monolith. I think a lot of people outside of California think that. Before I lived in California, I lived in Kentucky, which is another place that people think is a monolith. But being here, living here, engaging with people, understanding opinions behind political affiliations, has also shaped my ability to move about in different spaces. Being here in California and understanding how we work with politics, I say we because I am, you know, California citizen now. That it is different from D.C. it's different from Kentucky. And to accept what those differences are and appreciate them, I think has benefited me a lot.
- [04:25]
Jay Frost
Now, before you left D.C. you had roots here for a long time. You just described generations of it. What was your first professional foray? I understand you were a history teacher.
- [04:37]
Cherise Harrison
I was. I was a high school history teacher at an alternative high school in Washington. This was a charter school back in the early 2000s. I actually taught high school on 9 11. The students in this high school, again it was alternative, were the students who could not go to the other D.C. public schools. So they went to this type of school with the population that I worked with. I had a lot of students with disabilities with learning problems. I had some students older than me. But it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. And working on 911 and having to navigate all of the feelings of that day, because being in dc, I remember very vividly that no one knew what was going to happen next. No one understood, you know, what is this? How are we doing this? And to navigate that with students, with other teachers, with other staff and me being there, I was one of the last people to leave that school building that day. Because I lived relatively close to where the school was. I knew that my family was safe and so I could stay there while everyone else was able to navigate their way home. Because for Those who were around on that day, it was very difficult to get around the city. It was hard to leave the city to get. You could not get into the city. Public transportation was shut down in certain areas. So to give students cell phone service was down. For students to be able to leave, to have parents come. It was very chaotic. But I was able to stay there and be a calm presence for everyone there and to ensure that until the last person was able to get home, that there will always be someone there for them. So it really shaped how I interact with people and how I act in a crisis and understanding that I can be that support system. I can be someone that can be counted on.
- [06:34]
Jay Frost
You were a young person though you weren't too far distant from your students if you were a new teacher. So how did you find your composure when you like them, had no idea what was happening and the whole city was on alert? I mean, maybe, I don't know if you remember whether or not you might have had a sense that the city itself would be targeted. We later learned, of course it was. I mean the Capitol was a target for Flight 93 and of course the Pentagon. Everybody was very concerned about family. Perhaps you have family and friends who were at the Pentagon that day it was hit. So how did you find your peace of mind so you could remain composed for these students?
- [07:17]
Cherise Harrison
I think for myself, I've always been someone who's pretty good in crisis. I don't let chaos overwhelm me. For me the focus was safety for others because for myself I had a knowing that I was safe and my family was safe. So the fear and worrying did not occur. I had a one year old daughter, you know, she was one at the time, but I knew that she was safe. I knew that I could walk to my house if I had to. I knew, you know, if anything happened, there were all these other places I could was within walking distance. For them we were going to be safe. And so for me, since I didn't have to worry about myself and my family and my immediate circle, it was very easy for me to say, okay, how do we create safety in this environment? Because it's very vivid to me even all these years later that morning I was teaching a US History class and I was explaining the Continental Congress. And I had television in my classroom to show a portion of the movie the Patriot where they were showing the Continental Congress just to give a visual of what I'm talking about. And I had a student come in after first period and ask me, did you hear that Planes are flying into buildings. And it didn't register what she was saying to me. And I said, well, I haven't read the paper this morning. So I didn't hear about that. Then a teacher came in and he said, turn the news on. You have a television. In that moment, there were all of these messages going around that flights were headed towards the faa, they were headed towards the white, towards the Capitol, towards the monuments. I had students whose parents worked at these places. So there was all of this fear going on. They were headed to the tunnels, the bridges. So there was mass chaos coming through on the news. And you were seeing, especially from New York, what was happening after the planes had hit the towers. And it was all you saw all day. So we watched it, we listened, and again, it was very difficult to get through the day. And after that, D.C. public schools were closed for a week. I recall, again, native Washingtonian, but at the time, I was still relatively young. I had just graduated from college. There were military vehicles driving down the very residential neighborhood that I lived in. There were people like. You couldn't watch anything on the news. It was all you saw all the time. When I returned back to school after the week off and I gave students a space just to talk about what was happening. I had these high school students, some telling me I was watching Dora the Explorer with my younger siblings, because I just couldn't watch this anymore. I couldn't see it anymore. I was watching cartoons. I was doing anything but to watch this and to understand kind of the trauma that was happening in real time, but reacting to it in the moment, not thinking about that and just being very focused on the care of others.
- [10:34]
Jay Frost
And if. If I remember well, even though there were cell phones at the time, not everybody had a smartphone in their hand. Not the students, anyway.
- [10:42]
Cherise Harrison
Oh, no, there were no 2001, as far as I know. There were no smartphones. And cell service was down. And I was receiving messages a couple months later of people trying to contact me on that day to check to see if I was okay. But we only had landlines to use. And this, again, 2001 was before everybody had a cell phone. I mean, especially children and students. It wasn't like today, where you can call. It's very rare. If cell phone. If cell phone service went down, nothing would be able to happen. So we were relying on the news to tell us, is Metro running? Are the trains running? Because they were worried about the Metro tunnels being attacked. So running the trains and the bridges, some of the teachers, actually a lot of them Lived in Maryland, and to get out of D.C. they were asking for identification. I had a cousin who was supposed to come visit me that day who lived in Maryland. And if you did not live in the city, you could not get into the city. It was a very traumatic experience thinking about it, rehashing it, but thinking about how everybody really worked together to try to ensure that all of us were safe because there wasn't mass chaos or hysteria. There was a lot of people working together, people walking people, certain places. Even for myself and other teachers, again, I was one of the last people to leave that building. But we all sat and we all tried to do everything we could to help out, because again, we didn't know. And I think it shows the character of not only myself but everyone else involved that you will care about others. Especially in times of crisis.
- [12:31]
Jay Frost
It helps to have kind of the ability to pull out and see the world through a larger lens or a longer lens, especially in a time of crisis. You were a history teacher. You didn't know you were living through history necessarily at that moment, but you were experiencing it. And now you're looking at it as a historical event that many people listening will not remember or have experienced. That's pretty profound when I think about it. What led you into the interest in history in the first place? Why be a history teacher?
- [13:01]
Cherise Harrison
I actually originally went to college for communications. I wanted to be a sports journalist. I love sports. I grew up not playing sports, but watching sports. I was an avid reader of the Washington Post. I loved, you know, Michael Wilbond, Tony Kornheiser, reading their articles and reading stat. I've always liked stats and statistics and numbers, so I thought, this is something I want to go into. I went to college, took a couple of communication classes and hated them and thought, this is not for me. So I had taken an AP History class in high school and had credits because I did really well on the test and thought, okay, maybe I should major in history. And I recognized that I have a very good aptitude for history because I grew up with a lot of older people in my family. So I grew up with my great grandparents. They both my parents worked. So my great grandparents were my babysitters. I would read. They had all of these older books. So my great grandfather that I mentioned worked for the Kennedy administration. That administration gave a lot of the workers books. And my great grandfather still had those books. My family still has those books that. Including one that was signed by John F. Kennedy and all the encyclopedias. So I would spend time not Only watching Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, but reading encyclopedias in reading government books when I was a very small child. And once I got to college and I had a very wonderful history professor named Professor Rossi, and he would sit in front of the class and just tell stories. And I thought, this is like listening to my great grandfather. And I did exceptionally well in his class. I took every single course he taught, including a course on modern Ireland, which I know so much about now. And it just. History just very much interests me and growing up having family. So my family While originally from D.C. my great grandfather, his family is from central Virginia, just outside of Charlottesville. And I am very fortunate to know the history of my family. Where my great grandfather's grandfather was an enslaved person. He was freed in the 1850s and given land upon the death of the owners. My family still owns that land. It has a home in central Virginia. Knowing that history of my family and being able to track who we are, what we've done has always been a part of how I've grown up. Even in college when I was doing my thesis for undergrad, it was supposed to be about anything we wanted to do in World War II. And so I decided to do what is the African American presence in World War II in the military, what that looked like. So I was sitting at my great grandparents home, surrounded by dozens of books, writing note cards, writing my paper. My great grandmother sees one of the books about Benjamin L. Davis, who's the first African American general in the United States, and says, I know him. She and my great grandfather lived down the street from his son who was also a general. And I would, I talked to her just about like, well, what do you mean, you know him? And I had the opportunity growing up with them. When I would be in history classes, I would come home and say, hey, we just learned about this happening. My great grandmother's brother was at the bonus March in D.C. that protested or, right? This is like history lesson for people.
- [16:47]
Jay Frost
Yeah.
- [16:48]
Cherise Harrison
And so she said, no, this is what really happened, because my brother was there. And I remember when this happened. They were at the March on Washington. They were at all these historical things and events that occurred, or they knew people because again, D.C. was a very small place, especially back then, or a lot of people knew each other. Even the movie like the Butler that came out and I watched it and I thought, this reminds me of hearing about stories from my great grandfather of being, you know, on the White House grounds and my great grandmother working in these areas. Even my grandmother who is still alive, she would work cocktail parties for Dean Acheson and Harry S. Truman when she was a teenager. And it's hearing these stories. It was just so. I think I was just kind of trained to love and understand and to be able to apply history and to look at it not only from just the factual things, but to hear from the people who experienced it has always framed how much I absolutely adore history.
- [17:48]
Jay Frost
It sounds like your family didn't just live through a lot of history and know a lot of people also who are living through that history, but they articulated the significance of it with you as a very young person and you obviously internalized that and then made your own way. But that's, that's not something that's true for everybody. A lot of us are living in a very historical moment right now. Yes. And we may or may not see the significance of those things. And I'd love to ask you about that, but I don't want to depart from where you were. So you, you decided you were going to be a history teacher. You went and you did it, but you didn't stay. You've built a different kind of career over time. What made you decide to leave history and would you go on to next?
- [18:30]
Cherise Harrison
So I decided to leave because actually it was the 911 experience. After we got back, I had taken courses. I went to LaSalle University undergrad, and it's a Christian Brothers University. You have take courses in religion. And even though I myself am not a particularly religious person, I enjoyed learning about religion. So I took courses on Islam on a lot of different areas. So I understood who the people were that they were talking about when 911 happened. So I went back to school and said, okay, not only am I going to give everyone space to talk about what's going on, what's happening, but I'm also going to explain to you who these people are and why this happened. Because again, I'm a history teacher and I thought, especially with some of the conversations that were happening with the students. So I had students that shared that they wanted to violently attack the people who worked at 711 and things like that, where violence is clearly wrong. And I said, it's not only wrong, but these are not the same people. Like here are who we're talking about. And I remember I had a young Muslim girl in my class who was just devastated because she and her family overnight were treated like pariahs because of what was happening. So I was taking time in my history classes to say, here's what this is, here's what's going on. And this started getting around the school of, oh, Ms. Harrison is talking about this. She's doing this. I had other teachers come to me and say, well, can I sit down and learn some of the stuff for you so I can share with my class? Because we're all having these similar conversations with students as they're back. And you seem to know more about kind of this background outside of just what's on the news. And I started to do that, and then the principal talked to me about what I was sharing with everyone and told me to get back to the curriculum. And I thought that this is not what is going to serve these students in this time. I knew at the time very specifically, this is a traumatic experience. I remember saying, this is our Pearl Harbor. I understand how important and significant this was. I can teach about the Taft Hartley act anytime. I can teach these other things that happened decades and decades ago. But conceptualizing history right now is what students need, because most students, if you ask young people what their favorite thing to study is, what their favorite subject is, you will rarely hear history because it seems very boring, very abstract, and it doesn't apply to what we're doing now. So I instantly was like, let me change this to switch this up so that they can have this information and do better even as they are moving throughout their lives. So when I had that conversation, I thought, no, I don't want to do that. I don't think that that serves the students. I don't feel as though that serves the community that I'm in, because I feel as though, again, I live very close to the school. This is my community. I'm from here. And so I made the decision that this is not a good environment for me.
- [21:45]
Jay Frost
What you were experiencing, you weren't alone in that. Again, for those who didn't live through the time, and certainly not as a teacher where much of these interactions can be fraught, you have to worry about administration and parents. Sometimes other students. There are different reactions to things, but there was a lot of fear and anger.
- [22:06]
Cherise Harrison
Yes. And it was very unfortunate. And so at that point, I said, okay, I don't want to do this anymore. And I decided not to go into teaching because I thought, well, it's probably just going to be the same thing anywhere I go. And I really adored the population that I worked with. I didn't want to do mainstream teaching or private school. I liked the students who were the most marginalized. I'd like the fact that this is the group I want to work with because I feel like I can make the most difference. So I thought, okay, I still need a job. I still have to do something. And I found a position at a collection agency.
- [22:44]
Jay Frost
Okay, so of all the things you could do, did you have any idea what that would be like? First of all, I mean, did you just found a job? I think we've all been there. But why collections? And did it manifest itself like you imagined it would?
- [23:00]
Cherise Harrison
I did not necessarily exactly know what it was when I went to the interview. Again, this is back in the day before LinkedIn and doing things online. So I'm finding classifiers in the newspaper. And so I go to the interview and I get hired on the spot because it's one of those type of jobs. And I think, okay, I'll do this. And I had no idea what I was getting into when I first started. I was horrifically bad at it. I raised. I won't say I didn't raise and collect any money, because I was just like, I don't understand how you convince someone to give you money for something that they already have and they can't give back. So we did medical collections as well as some utility collections. But with medical collections, you've already had the service and you cannot be denied service. So there really is no incentive of paying the bill. With the utility collections, there was kind of the threat of, oh, we'll cut off the utility. But in certain spaces, they wouldn't cut it off. Or if it was a cell phone, it's like, oh, I can just go somewhere else and get a cell phone. This is not this big, that big of a deal. So there's nothing that makes someone say, oh, I have to do this or I need to do this. So the people who have been there for a while are. I felt like some of them were the very stereotypical ones that are just going to, like, yell at you and you have to pay your bills and this. And I thought, that is not me. That is not my personality. That will never come out of me. So how do I figure this out? And so we had some policies change where we could negotiate. It wasn't just, okay, you owe $500, give us $500, end of discussion. It was, okay, you can negotiate down to a certain amount. And then I had the opportunity to really talk to people. And when I started talking to people and listening to what they were saying about their bills. So for one instance with cell phones, there was always. As soon as I called and said, this is, you know, you owe this amount of money. Well, I don't owe them that much money. I owe them this amount of money. So I was thinking, oh, this is my end. You recognize you owe them something. So let's talk about, you know, well, maybe I can work it out because they don't know them. I can negotiate. I'll, you know, make you a deal. Let's do this. If you pay this right now, it'll all go away. It'll do this. So I became very good at it because I knew that as soon as I said, here's the amount. If someone says, I don't owe them that much, I know I'm going to collect some money.
- [25:31]
Jay Frost
If someone says, you start by listening. It sounds like.
- [25:34]
Cherise Harrison
Exactly. If someone says, I don't owe them anything, I'm not gonna. So I'm not gonna waste a whole lot of time on this call. And it was a numbers game. It was about calling. It's literally like fundraising, kind of, to be honest. There's no incentive word. And it really taught me very active listening and then how to respond in kind. So it's one thing to listen well, but it's another thing to be able to respond in a way, to solicit the type of reaction that you want. And that has helped me throughout my career because working in prospect development, advancement Services, I don't have frontline fundraisers working for me. A lot of people who have to use the systems and the processes I create are not held accountable to me, but I still need them to cooperate into work in the system in the way that I wish that they did. So how do you talk to them and get them to do this? With absolutely no authority. And I use that working at not only the school, but also working at a collection agency to be able to have very intimate conversations listening to people, what people are telling me. So I would create policies based on that. I don't come in and say, here's what we're going to do. I come in and listen first. And then when you tell people I'm taking this from your idea, they're much more likely to work with you and want to have those conversations and work within a new system.
- [26:57]
Jay Frost
Right. Well, so the. I've heard from many people who are in different parts of development that a first job, knocking on doors for freeze or, you know, making calls, sales calls for selling tickets to Arena Stage, that help them to. To eventually do work in the annual fund or something like that. But this is. This is a different kind of application of a skill set. It sounds like, though, that you were Having some success there, and maybe it was even almost enjoyable. How'd you decide to leave collections?
- [27:32]
Cherise Harrison
It never became enjoyable. It just became less painful. But I recognized again, this is not for me, which I think is why my career has never taken a turn for frontline fundraising, that I can do it and I could probably do it well, but it's not something I enjoy doing. So what do I enjoy? And after that is when I discovered prospect research.
- [27:56]
Jay Frost
Okay, well how did you discover that? Because that's even more obscure than collections for most people.
- [28:01]
Cherise Harrison
It is. One thing about collections is you're researching phone numbers and addresses of people. So it's called skip tracing. And again, classified in the newspaper. At Howard University, I saw a research assistant and I thought, okay, I can absolutely do research. Because at this point I'm only about eight year and a half outside of college, have a degree in history, I can do research. This can work. I apply for a research assistant position and I sit in the interview and the person interviewing me says, oh, you have a degree in history. You can do this job. To this day, I am still connected to and I feel like I am still friends with my first ever supervisor at Howard University who is still in the industry. And I shout her out all the time. But her name is Jamie Davis. She works for World Vision now. And I credit her with getting me into the industry. Because going to Howard, not only was she very good at mentoring me of this is what this industry is, but sending me to places like the foundation center, which doesn't exist anymore. It's a part of Candid. But I ended up working at the foundation center later the DC office. I was a research associate for the Associates program where you would sign up and you had pretty much an on call prospect researcher. And that taught me volume how to get in, get information, do the research quickly because we had a 24 hour turnaround time. But getting into that industry with Howard, at the time, Howard was the first HBCU to do a billion dollar campaign. So I went directly into a pain as my first job in this understanding. So it was being thrown into everything very quickly. And I thought, I like this work, this is what I like doing. And with Howard, I. It was my introduction to it and I thought I could do all these other things. There's other stuff that I can do and learn, which is why my next job was at the Foundation Center.
- [30:17]
Jay Frost
But before you just skip past Howard, I mean again, for context, for people who don't know the HBCU world, like Howard has a storied history, generally, but especially here in the D.C. area.
- [30:31]
Cherise Harrison
Absolutely.
- [30:32]
Jay Frost
In school and for lots of reasons, especially historical reasons, but. But obviously a stellar school today. So you were there working in this shop with people like, like Jamie Davis, I guess, getting your skills ready, then moving over into. Even though it wasn't. It was and is a not for profit organization. It's more of a business at Candid than working within a university environment. So how did you find that shift and what did you maybe learn from that experience, especially as things were evolving? Because when you were there, I'm sure you went from people still grabbing books off shelves at the foundation center to everything moving to digital. There's still some things on paper, but much of the world changing. The way we interacted with data, the way we thought about data collection, the way we even interacted with people who work in the world of data and data science. So what was that transition like for you and what did you learn from it?
- [31:32]
Cherise Harrison
It was very interesting because not only, as you mentioned, Howard is very. A very important school, not only to D.C. but even to the history of this country. I went to high school across the street from Howard. I graduated from my high school graduation was at Crampton Auditorium in Howard. So I'm very close to Howard. I have plenty of friends who are Howard alumni.
- [31:53]
Jay Frost
I'm confused. It's just because it was too.
- [31:55]
Cherise Harrison
I wanted to go away. Yeah, I wanted to go away to school. I was like, I wanna, I gotta get out of here. Because again, fourth generation, all I know is these things.
- [32:03]
Jay Frost
Okay, I understand.
- [32:06]
Cherise Harrison
And then going to the foundation center, again, this is how small of a world this is. My aunt worked in the office of nonprofits in D.C. and she would send a lot of new nonprofits. So if you were getting your 501c3 signing up, her department would help you navigate that system and she would send a lot of these new nonprofit organization founders to the foundation center to get training. When I applied for the job, I put her down as a reference because I spent a lot of time volunteering because my uncle has his own nonprofit and I've done, you know, 990s for him when I was like in high school. So non profit has always been in my blood and knowing that, oh, she, you know, understands what this is. I did an internship that she helped me with. So again, I'm still not that far outside of college that I put her down as a reference and the executive director of the foundation center said, we know your aunt. I didn't know she knew that they saw her name, and I had no idea when I applied for the job that this is what would happen. So, again, very, very small world about how connected everybody is. And even my family being able to say, okay, she has a lot of this background already. She knows this already because she has someone that even if there are questions she's not even necessarily going to ask you all at work, she has someone else who knows the whole DC process who can help her understand this. So moving into the foundation center with the Associates Program, it was. How do you figure out the mission of an organization? Very quickly, because a lot of times I would have a phone call with an organization and they would explain to me, here is what our organization is. This is even when every single organization did not have a website, so there wasn't always a website I could go to and learn everything I need to learn about the organization. So, again, those very good listening skills that I had from the collection agency came into play. And it also taught me to ask very good questions because I didn't have a whole lot of time and I couldn't do a lot of back and forth of what about this? What about that? I had to figure out what are the questions I need answered to be able to fulfill this research request. Was it very transactional? Yes. But I did get accustomed to some of the members. There were, I think when I was there, about maybe 200 members. And everyone doesn't request things all the time, but there were some that made more requests than others. So some I really got to know and got to understand what their work was. So I think that with being in that environment, not only being able to work with the Associates Program members, I also worked in the. In the front facing of the library. So I would help people that came in navigate. Wonderful library, tons of books that help you understand how to navigate the nonprofit world, whether you're starting one executive director, if you're doing boards. I've taken every single foundation center class. I was being trained to do those classes as well, as well as the Foundation Director online. Since we were the only team that actively used it for research. We did a lot of. Gave a lot of feedback. So a lot of those improvements came from me because it was myself and one other person who did the Associates Program, where I said, hey, this is actually a better way to do this, because this is how people should be using it, not this way. So having the ability to give that feedback and to say, here's how this data works. Here's how this interacts with my job and how I'm helping people was kind of my first foray into actually doing some data science and analysis.
- [36:11]
Jay Frost
And that was, I guess we're still talking about very early on. But that wasn't for too long, I guess, before you jumped into the thick of what is now the principal part of your career. Right. So you went on to Kentucky directly from there. And.
- [36:26]
Cherise Harrison
And I did Georgetown.
- [36:30]
Jay Frost
Georgetown. Excuse me. Yeah.
- [36:32]
Cherise Harrison
So Georgetown. So at the foundation center, the Associates program, we weren't having as many members, so it was being phased out and I was being transitioned more towards being a librarian, which I thought I actually really like doing this work and could I be a librarian and be good at it? Sure. But I like this work, so I need to go do something else. And I found my way to Georgetown. I, someone I worked with at Howard had just left Georgetown and he let me know, hey, there's a position open for a researcher. You'd probably be really good there. And so again, small world of knowing everybody and also having, I think, good relationships with people. So going to Georgetown, and I always say that Georgetown taught me what a everything about a campaign. It was very intense because I felt like I was a bit far removed in Howard with a lot of the bigger conversations that were happening. But I was thrown into it at Georgetown, who's also in the midst of a billion dollar campaign when I was there.
- [37:38]
Jay Frost
Oh, okay.
- [37:39]
Cherise Harrison
And with Georgetown, the way that everything was segmented and set up, it was my first introduction to prospect management because I really didn't work with portfolios in the work that I was doing before my first introduction to real data analysis. And since I'd done some of that work at the foundation center, once I got to Georgetown, our reporting people that were training me, they recognized that I understood how to pull the data. So I was given a little more access than everybody else to be able to play around with it a little bit, pull data, look at things in a different way, and streamline some work that had to be done. I'm very big on streamlining. I'm a person that if it takes me multiple steps to do something, I am always trying to figure out a shorter way to do it. The least complicated thing is better for me.
- [38:32]
Jay Frost
You are alluding right there to the difficulty sometimes within offices to gaining access to data that'll let you do your job better, but also help the whole office, the whole institution do better. Was that the first time you'd run into that? Because I have a feeling that's a story that keeps building.
- [38:48]
Cherise Harrison
It does. And I Think it's also knowing how to talk to people. When I was being trained in asking questions and not saying, well, I know how to do this or I should be doing that, it was just asking, well, have we ever looked at it this way? What about that? Have we ever tried to do that? And sometimes just doing things and not asking for permission or forgiveness and saying, this is just what I'm going to do now, and if someone needs me to stop it, they'll have me stop it. Which is also kind of a hallmark of my personality of sometimes it's just like, just go and do it. And if you have to be stopped, you'll be stopped. But you can institute a lot of change by being a bit fearless in saying that. I really believe and think that this is right and move forward with it with intention.
- [39:37]
Jay Frost
Well, I'm sure that the lack of awareness about what these roles are, what they can do, maybe even what the job description was initially when you took these positions, it. It both helps and hurts, doesn't it? Because on the one hand, people have assumptions about everything, but one of them might be, well, this person's either just a librarian and then you have to fight for everything, or the other one is, oh, this person really is in charge of all the data, so we better just let them do what they want, but then have unrealistic expectations. Did you run into some of that and as you then moved on, because you're right, I skipped a whole passages. I know you went from there to Women for Women and then to the Humane Society, which also. I mean, I'm sure you could talk about that. I know you weren't there a long time, but that's a massive data operation. I mean, I don't know if you work with that data, but that's huge.
- [40:26]
Cherise Harrison
I did. I did. It was. So I went. I was only at Women for Women, and I probably would have been there a lot longer, but my family and I decided to move to Kentucky. Okay, so that's why it was the move at the time. D.C. was just getting so expensive, and things were shifting in a way that I really didn't like. And I thought at this point, my daughter was about to be in middle school, so my husband at the time and I were thinking, okay, we probably want to move out of this area to somewhere a little slower, a little nicer. So my husband at the time was originally from Louisville, Kentucky. So I've been to Kentucky before. It's not like, you know, oh, this is why this place. But that's why but he was from Louisville, not Lexington. And a position opened up at University of Kentucky for Prospect Research and Management Manager. And I thought, I could do this. This is great. These people seem very nice. I'll go in and do this. At the time that I started at University of Kentucky, HIPAA laws changed. So I work with UK Healthcare specifically on the healthcare side. I think the laws changed maybe six months before I got there. My supervisor was a fundraiser, so she's a senior director of development and she had been working in healthcare fundraising for most of her career and thought, oh my gosh, we get more information now, we can do certain things. So there were already some systems set up before I got there. And I think in my first three months I was meeting with the head of compliance at UK Healthcare to talk about the data. And at this point I'm comfortable with data, but I would never have considered myself a data person at this point. I didn't even know how to use pivot tables. So I was thinking, okay, we have the conversations with the head of compliance and they give me the new data, which I find out later at an AFRA conference. It was very difficult for fundraising shops to get the new information from their compliance offices. I was one of the only ones in the country who had all the data and they gave it to me just for, I guess, reference. We received information on our hospital and our clinics. So UK Health Care had an adult hospital, pediatric hospital, and then they operated clinics across the state of Kentucky. So I receive a daily report, anywhere between 10 and maximum 50 people of here's, you know, who's in the hospital. But then every two weeks I would get the clinic list which would have about 10,000 names on it. And so we had maybe about eight to nine frontline fundraisers across different areas of, oh, well, what type of information? Who are the best prospects here? It would take me three days to get through those lists. And I thought, this is taking me entirely too long. There's got to be a better way.
- [43:21]
Jay Frost
First of all, at the time, I don't know what tools you had, but three days for 10,500 people doesn't sound like a long time to most people, but it was what in terms of the expectation that they had or that you had for yourself?
- [43:33]
Cherise Harrison
Because for myself, okay, because I was also a one person shop. I didn't have a team of people. I was the only person doing this work.
- [43:41]
Jay Frost
Well, how in the world were you going through 10,500 names in three days?
- [43:44]
Cherise Harrison
Well, that's the thing. We did have Screening information. So I was taking the screening information and using that. But because of our CRM, we could not put patient data into the CRM. It was all living in spreadsheets.
- [43:57]
Jay Frost
And that was because of their interpretation of hipaa, or it was the nature of the database itself, or so the.
- [44:02]
Cherise Harrison
Database, they couldn't set it up where it would restrict certain information. So if you were not HIPAA compliant.
- [44:09]
Jay Frost
Then you couldn't see it.
- [44:10]
Cherise Harrison
You couldn't see it.
- [44:11]
Jay Frost
Right.
- [44:12]
Cherise Harrison
So it's a lot of pressure on.
- [44:13]
Jay Frost
You, not just for processing all that data, but then for maintaining it all. No wonder when you went to conferences, people said, you're doing what?
- [44:22]
Cherise Harrison
And I was thinking, there's got to be a better way to do this. But from my time at foundation center, also at Georgetown, and even some work I did at Women for Women, of how do you look at this information? How do you figure out what's good? You know, what's a good prospect? What does that mean? So I took a look at all of the data points that we had coming from the hospitals, the healthcare side, and then looking at all the data points we had from our CRM, I created my own access database to merge the data. Because I had worked in an access database before, and I thought, okay, I kind of know how this works and I can set it up for myself. And then I started Googling. Well, how do I dedupe something in this? How can I look at this? That's when I figured out how to use pivot tables. And so I was figuring out, here's how I could start looking at data in different ways. Then it dawned on me, oh, I'm pulling all this information every single time. How do I look at it in a better way? So I went to Central Development, who was in charge of the CRM, and asked questions about, hey, can you build these reports for me? And this is not an exaggeration. I sat on the phone for two hours one time with the report writer, trying to explain, here's what I need to see. And it still wasn't exactly what I wanted, because I was like, I have this vision. I can see what I want. I know it's there. I just can't build it myself because I don't have access. And I went to my supervisor and said, I need access to build my own reports. Central Development was not happy about that because nobody outside of just that data management team had access to build reports. They were the only ones who held that data. And so I explained, I'm doing all this work that you all can't view. So I should have access. We had a conversation with the head of Advancement Services, with the head of the database management team. Begrudgingly, they gave me access and told me that they would not train me.
- [46:29]
Jay Frost
So once again, it sounds like you were doing a lot of self training through this whole process. So now you had to learn how to deal with it. Was that kind of a form of passive aggressive punishment because you finally got access to this data? That there was their, their, their soul province before it is.
- [46:50]
Cherise Harrison
And I will say that I also recognize because I moved to Kentucky from Washington D.C. anyone who's listening to me, if you've ever known anyone from Kentucky, you know that I do not have a Kentucky accent. I don't sound like I'm from there. African American woman. And at the time I was relatively young, so I had all these things about my identity that did not align with everybody else I was working with and everybody else who's in charge of the data and doing this and who had done this for 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. And I'm coming in new, fully admitting I'm not an expert in this. I kind of know it, but I don't really know it. And so having that challenge, I always say that University of Kentucky is probably one of the best places I've ever worked. Worked because the leadership I had in UK healthcare, when I said, hey, this is something I want to do, they never questioned me. They never said, are you sure you want to do that? Maybe you should let them do that. They 100% had my back and they said, let's go have the conversation. We're going to make them do it. Let's give you the opportunity to be successful. Once I got access, I started having conversations with the fundraisers about, you have to tell me what a good prospect is. And I always said to them, it's kind of like the eye chart. Is this better? Is that better? Is it A or B? What's more important is this, is that. So I would always report out to them, here's what I'm working on, here's what I'm doing. And they had 100% faith in me that whatever I was creating, because all of them would fully admit, we have no idea what Sharice is talking about half the time, but we believe that whatever you're working on, whatever you're doing is going to be amazing and it's going to help us do our jobs better. So there was never any doubt from them that I could do this. And I can learn this. So I'm a completely self taught data scientist. I have never taken a course in statistics, any type of data science whatsoever. But it was through Google, it was through YouTube, it was through just figuring stuff out for myself that I was able to learn SQL, that I was able to now in my career be a leader in the industry in data science and how it's applied. My team at Santa Clara won a case award for our work in natural language processing, which is a form of machine learning. And it's because I was just thinking there's got to be a better way to do this. And I never allowed myself or anybody else to tell me that I couldn't figure it out or I couldn't get to a better space.
- [49:18]
Jay Frost
And you know, I know you took that with you too. As you said, Santa Clara, you were there for, for nearly four years and through a succession of other things. I know doing some work with the consultancy and then Loyola. But now you're at Cal State University Sacramento in an AVP role, which is I think still a relative rarity for a person coming from the kind of knowledge warehouse, end of development. You know, people worked in prospect research, prospect development, data science, all those things. Is that your impression too? Is. Am I mistaken about that?
- [49:55]
Cherise Harrison
No, I think it is. I think a lot of people usually come up through maybe gift processing or even through the fundraising arm or more so operations with being in this role. So in this role now, I've been here almost a year. It'll be a year at the end of next month. And I've had more than one job since I've been here four and a half months in. I was admin in charge, which is effectively the interim vp, which was very shocking to me when I first started this job. Guess what? You're in charge of the entire division now for a few months until we hire someone. So that I did make a caveat that I will accept this, but I will not do frontline fundraising. I will do everything else. No frontline fundraising.
- [50:37]
Jay Frost
You're still feeling like that after, after all this time?
- [50:39]
Cherise Harrison
All that? Yeah, no frontline fundraising, but being in that position. So starting off, we're going through a database conversion, which I've done before. I've done numerous. I was like, I know how to do that. Prospect management and research. I could do it in my sleep. I understand how to set these systems up. I. I've done it at a lot of different places. Gift processing, I managed it a bit when I was at University of Kentucky, but it was probably the weakest part of what I had in my background and week is relative. But being here in four months, in being on the president's cabinet was very kind of eye opening for me. Of here's how you're looking at this at the university level. So it's not just me working with my vp, but as the vp, here are all these things you're working with. We also have a foundation, since we're a public school, that working directly with the foundation, being the executive, the interim executive director of the foundation. How do you. And again, since we're public, there are all these rules and regulations around how information has to get out, compliance. So I know so much about compliance now that it is insane. But being here, it is probably the most challenging position I've ever had in my career and I absolutely love it. I love the fact that it was just very chaotic for me to come in for four months, not even really get a good footing into my job that I was hired in, get put into this very large position. Our president has been here, I think he was here a year before I started. So we have a brand new president. But with everything going on now with the new administration and what's going on in higher education and things like that, I have a better understanding. I have an amazing VP now that was hired in September. Super happy he's here that I don't do that work anymore. But it allowed me to expand how I look at my work. So when I'm listening to people say, oh my gosh, I have this issue about a $25,000 gift and it's like, yeah, okay, but let's, you know, conceptualize like what's happening really here at, with the university. How do we think about what we're doing is bigger than ourselves in just our own individual role? Because I think even goes back to my first job at the school where you can't just be so focused on yourself and your own thing. You have to know, because for myself, I know I'm very good at what I do. I don't have to worry about anybody challenging me on that. They can try if they want to, but not happening. But for me, it's. I don't have to sit and worry about, am I going to make a mistake, am I going to do something wrong? Because I'm human. Mistakes happen. But I know I'm very good at what I do. So I can focus on how can we make everything that's supposed to be happening within university advancement run as cleanly, smoothly, efficiently as possible. Because we are the operations arm of it. I work across campus because I sat on cabinet. I literally know all the deans, I know all the other VPs, everyone on the board where, when I was just working in prospect management research, I couldn't even imagine being around all these types of individuals all the time. And for me it's not necessarily a imposter syndrome, it's more of a yeah, I do belong here. Getting here, being placed in this, accepting it, and say, sure, I'll come in, I'll do this, I'll be good at it. And again, with my background of where I come from, who I am and my identities do exist in the industry of my ability to be able to do this, I think is not only a testament to myself, but also the spaces I've been able to work in. Because you can only be as successful from my experience as your environment allows you to be.
- [54:39]
Jay Frost
As, as you describe that. I'm imagining what it's like for a person, wherever they're from, whatever the background is, whatever their identity is, working in the field of prospect development and they don't have that entry point that you just had at Sacramento. They come into an office without having met and sat at a table at the same size chair with all the other deans and all these other muckety mucks that must be tremendously helpful both in terms of understanding what the needs are, but also being able to communicate for the needs and abilities and wishes of you and your team. So for those who don't have that experience, I wonder if there's a lesson to be learned for them. If there's a demand that can be made when people are applying for or onboarding and jobs to say this is what is required in order to have the same level of, you know, fluidity and respect and success that you're enjoying in an environment where clearly you're respected, but maybe others don't feel like they are just because they never had that environment. What is there something that you would offer to people who are making that journey, their own journey so that they, they say, no, this is what I need in order to be successful where, where, you know, in taking on this.
- [55:58]
Cherise Harrison
Role, I definitely would, I would say understand what your strengths are. We all have weaknesses. Understand what your strengths are and go into environments and places that want you to expand on that, to say, I want you to be great. Because for myself, if anybody looks at my LinkedIn, it might look like, oh, she's jumped around a bit, she's gone to different positions for short amounts of time. But for myself, when I get into a situation or position and I do not see a path to success, I don't spend a whole lot of time there. And I think that's one thing that people can be afraid of, where, oh, you don't have longevity here. But I think it's not. It doesn't serve myself and it doesn't serve the organization. If who I am, how I work and what I'm capable of is not appreciated by the organization, it's either not going to happen there and I'm going to be upset. They're not going to be happy with me. So what's the point in even doing this? So being brave enough honestly to say, this environment is not for me. So for myself, working in things like advancement services, operations, prospect management, research, prospect development, analytics, I like, like doing that. And for me, I'm like, I can do that anywhere, but I want to do it in a place where I can be very successful. But I define what success looks like. And I think that's the thing. When you're going into different environments or applying for jobs, you should already know what success looks like for you and your next step and then look for positions or opportunities that reflect that. And once you get into the space, if you recognize that, oh, the success I'm after is not capable here, for whatever reason, you can't force it. It's like, let me find a place where I can be successful. Because again, when I came here to SAC State, most people didn't know my background. They didn't know APERA background, Chronicle, philanthropy. Some of the people I interviewed with, yeah, I talked about that a bit, but the president of the university didn't know that. He really didn't know that much about me when it was offered. It was just, oh, we've talked to everybody else about who should do this, why you should do this, and I respect that. And we want you here. And so for myself, I also stayed true to myself. I didn't try to be a fundraiser vp. When I sat in those meetings, I talked about data, I asked about reports, asked about numbers all the time. I took my prospect development background and said, right in those cabinet meetings and really reflected that because that was a perspective that doesn't really exist there. Because if you think about VPs across the board, very, very few of them are not frontline fundraisers by trade. And so to say, this is that background. Here's what you need to understand, here's what you need to have and to have it respected. I Think that everybody needs to figure that out for themselves. And then to not be afraid to say something isn't working. I'm going to find the space that I really want to be in. And to be honest, the only reason I'm not still working at University of Kentucky is because I moved to California. And I moved to California because my daughter went to college out here.
- [59:14]
Jay Frost
I was going to ask you about that, and in fact, we'll just do that now. It's not just about your daughter, who now I understand is. Is in Europe, but. But also you're straight across the country. I mean, you can't go much further away from where you grew up than where you are. Don't you miss it? I mean, you just talked about how not only do you have four generations of family here, but the significance of D.C. in so many ways to your family and so many others is really important. Not the least of which, frankly, is the demography of D.C. and it's changed a little bit with time, in part because of what you said about housing costs. But it's still a very different sort of place to like Sacramento. So do you. Do you miss it? And can you imagine staying out in California? What's. What is the difference for you between these two places? The biggest difference.
- [60:14]
Cherise Harrison
The biggest difference for me, and this is going to sound ridiculous, is the weather. I cannot stand snow. I don't like being cold. Growing up in D.C. living in a row house and having to shovel out your car and hope that your parking spot is there later, because I don't know what D.C. is like now. I haven't lived in D.C. and I think at this point, maybe about 14 years, it's.
- [60:38]
Jay Frost
It's the same. There's less snow, but it's the same.
- [60:40]
Cherise Harrison
Right? And I was just like, this is. I get so much anxiety driving in snow. It's a lot. And I was home not too long ago, about a month ago. I try to always go home to visit my family for around the holidays at the end of the year. And driving through the city, it's like the. The streets are so much more narrow than in California, and there are speed cameras everywhere. And I was thinking, oh, my gosh, this is horrible. I will say, though, D.C. cannot be beat for the actual arts in history. Being in D.C. and just driving, coming from the airport and driving past the Kennedy center, you know, and being able to go to museums for free. It was a shock to my assistant when I left the city and had to pay to go to museums. And these are top. Not like internationally known museums to go to where there's art everywhere. Even the architecture, which I didn't even realize until I had a friend go back to D.C. with me from California who'd never really been there before, and took them to Georgetown, National Cathedral, downtown. And they just marveled at the architecture and all the brick and everything. And I thought, yeah, this is pretty nice. This is what the neighborhoods look like. And appreciating that even when I visit, because my daughter lives in Amsterdam now, when I visit Amsterdam, I have that same appreciation of the architecture and the art that's just everywhere. In California, though, you cannot beat the weather. It is January right now. It's almost 60 degrees outside, it's sunny. It might rain later this week, but it's just like, okay, granted, in Sacramento, when I did move here in July of last year, is 115 degrees. So that is not necessarily something I enjoy. But it's also more laid back here. I have noticed that I am a bit more relaxed living in California when I go back to D.C. it's. I think it's the traffic and driving on the narrow streets. But I appreciate going back to D.C. because I'm from there, my family's there. I will always say dc. Ask me about DC I tell them they need to go visit. It's a wonderful, amazing place to live and to be. I cannot see myself moving back because I think I'm so acclimated to a California lifestyle. I go hiking. I live across the street from a river. I literally go hiking a few miles every single weekend. You're not that far from just amazing beauty. I lived in the Bay Area before I moved to Sacramento last year. And you're on the Pacific, you're on the Bay, you're in the Redwoods. It's so beautiful and so relaxing to just be here. I really do like the west coast, so I can't foresee myself ever wanting to have to deal with snow. But if it does snow in Sacramento, like, all bets are all we'll see.
- [63:49]
Jay Frost
Aside from the snow. You also mentioned the politics of this town.
- [63:53]
Cherise Harrison
Yeah.
- [63:53]
Jay Frost
And the politics are a big feature of not just what's going on in the Capitol. You have that in the capital there in Sacramento, too. But just. Just the whole environment of people discussing and feeling like they're part of a discussion, whether they're, you know, again, like all the members of your family who have worked in some facet or another of the government or in relation to it or adjacent to it. And politics now are a huge feature of Every discussion in America now that politics are more national than they are local. So do you feel as connected to those issues today as perhaps you were? And if so, how I am now.
- [64:36]
Cherise Harrison
I, growing up in DC is another very crazy thing about dc. The guest speaker at my high school graduation was Hillary Clinton. So it's, I took the SAT with Chelsea Clinton. It's very much like it's such a part of life. And I didn't realize it until my second husband, he first met my family were having a cookout at my grandmother's house and he said, you all talk about politics all the time. So it's like the summertime, nothing's really going on, but people are talking about it. So it's just so much a part of me. When politics for myself became less logical for me and less factual based, I, I tapped out of news in politics for a very long time. Starting with I want to say, was it the 20, 20, 20 election? I, I said, you know, I'm, I'm going to try to keep, you know, keep my civic mindedness about me, but the way that the messages are being portrayed to me also having a degree in history and knowing a lot about propaganda is being able to pick that apart and say this is not something that's going to be good for me to really pay attention to, so I'll move on from it. But now because there is such, I can't ignore it. I don't have the privilege of being able to ignore it. And even the fact that I was able to not necessarily ignore it, but not have it as a forefront that have it as something I have to pay attention to is 100% a privilege for myself that a lot of people are not afforded. And being here in California for myself, I felt a little bit of protection just because it's California. And with everything that happened during COVID with our governor, the president at the time, I was just like, well, yeah, I'm still in California, my family's still in D.C. so there's still some protection from certain things. But now with the way things are changing and happening, I have to be. I literally yesterday set up alerts for myself to understand if any types of executive orders are coming through, they may impact non profits. What we do, because I'm in charge of making sure we spend our foundation money correctly. So if there are any orders about non profits, how we accept money, what we do with our funds, I need to be aware of it instantly. So it's, I went from, oh, I can kind of pay attention to it that I have to make sure it comes to me even if I'm not looking for it because it's so important, especially working on a college campus with we have students, we are all of the things in California. So we are Hispanic serving institution, we're aanapisi, which is Asian American. We are the first black serving institution in California. So we have a lot of marginalized identity students here, very excessively diverse staff and faculty where there are targets in some of these executive orders that we need to be aware of constantly. And so for myself, it's okay. I think I'm back into like me teaching high school of for whatever happens, I have a strong faith that I will be okay, my family will be okay. And that doesn't mean that we're not going to be impacted. It's just the fact that I will not spend time worrying about what could potentially happen and focus my energies on how can I maintain or create safe spaces for not only my team, but I have student workers for people that I can touch here at the university. And even outside of that, even thinking about my role in APRA of how can I be a person that ensures that this is a space where people can be accepted. There are these things that are happening that they're going to happen, have to get through it. But also my background, I think in history has helped with this. Where this country has not done wonderful things throughout its history, but I'm aware of that and we're all still here today. And there's still great things that have come out of trials and tribulations in the past. So for me, my process of looking at things of there's always been oppression across the board for a lot of different groups. But the length of time that oppression is allowed to exist has been shrinking over the course of human history. If you really study history, it will always exist. It will always happen. However, the amount of time that we as humanity accept it and think it's okay is shortened. So from my perspective, looking at it as this is a time that we're existing in right now, this time will be past. This time we just how do you move through it is how I really look at things and try to shape that. Where I can't get bogged down and thinking about what if this happens, what if that happens happens, if something happens, we deal with it in the best way possible. We deal with it in a way that hopefully we could have everyone be safe and secure. Like when 911 happened. I couldn't have thought of that in my wildest dreams, but it happened and reacted to it in the way I did. So for me, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what if this, what if that, but preparing myself. If something happens, be ready to act in a way that ensures safety for whoever's around you, for people, because even for yourself, again, I think, okay, you'll be okay, whatever okay means. And I think that's the thing that I try to tell people, that okay for me might not be okay for other people. And whatever I'm okay with, that's a decision I make for myself and I.
- [70:29]
Jay Frost
Move forward with it now. Thinking about maybe as a last question then, how this informs the role you're going to take on when you do assume the helm of the opera presidency. And for those who, who aren't aware of this, you come, I guess, is it an incoming president and then president and then immediate past president? I'm trying to remember the titles, yes. So there's another president right now and hats off to that person. But then you'll be taking on that role. And this is kind of a brief term in order to have an impact, but you're out there, you're speaking about these issues, not just here, but many other places. So how, how does all of this inform what you're talking about? Especially when it comes to awareness of how things impact the field, but not responding with hair on fire. You just described that so beautifully that we have to be ready for things, but we react to them when they occur. We don't go crazy in advance. Is that also true for this field? What are you thinking as you are about to assume assume that role in terms of how you will help others to view this field of prospect development in a coherent, rational, but forward looking way?
- [71:50]
Cherise Harrison
I think for myself because currently I'm President Elect for this one year. I will be president for one year, then past president for one year. And the way that I looked at it was that being President doesn't necessarily change my impact on apra, it really just changes, okay, how can I set us up for a better future with how I work and how I think? So as President of apra, when I go into my role, I'm really thinking about how do we ensure we are now and we remain data focused. So there is data in what we do. We don't have to make every decision based solely on here's the data because we don't want analysis paralysis, but we should have some basis of that. And I'm also a systems person when I come into any Job I look at what systems do we have? How can we build out better systems? And I always say systems because systems are fluid, they're not structures. Where for myself, looking at how can we create this environment where APRA membership understands how they fit into every aspect of apra, where they understand, if I want to remain in this type of position for my entire career, is there a future to this position? If I want to grow, if I, you know, don't necessarily want to be like Shareese, but I do want to be a vp, what does that pathway look like if I'm in the prospect development field? Again, there's not a lot of VPs out there who come from this field, but it is possible. So how do we have that system where we say, okay, what does leadership look like? And how do you expand in your career even if you don't want to be a supervisor or manager, what do these types of things look like? And so with those systems, how do we communicate this? How are we offering up education around it? How are we making sure that the APRA membership we understand what technology is? Because being left behind, I feel like every stage of my career there has been some type of technology that says that we are going to be obsolete. We are not, we're not going to be okay. However, you have to understand how to maximize this technology first. And one of the ways I feel like for myself I've been very successful is because I can maximize technology very well. When I go into spaces, I don't think it's any type of threat to me doing my job. It's actually a huge resource to be able to understand. Here is how you utilize technology. If all you do is prospect research, if all you do is prospect management and you don't do data analytics, you don't do reporting, you still have to be able to maximize technology. And maximizing it doesn't mean the technology that's just around today. Because five years from ago, AI was not a huge buzzword, it is now. So it's not saying you have to be an expert in this. I spoke a lot about cryptocurrencies a few years ago and that kind of just went away back again. But it's not being set in one type of technology. But how do you absorb it and utilize it to make sure that what you're doing, because this is the industry that that we're in, can evolve along with it and creating those systems to ensure that that evolution happens for eternity for APRA. Because even when I started in APRA, I feel like I joined in 2008, data science, data analytics was not a part of prospect development. So that evolution is there and as president I want to make sure that it continues. But we systematize it and we make sure that our ability to utilize technology as as a group of people and as an industry is top notch.
- [75:42]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM podcast. If you would like to learn more about APRA, visit aprahome.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research for nonprofit fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and it's provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise, and come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.