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Melissa Kilby has led the nonprofit Girl Up for nearly 13 years—two of which as CEO. For Kilby, leading means listening, especially within an organization dedicated to serving young girls in their pursuit of education.
While Girl Up started as a US-based organization, during Kilby’s time there it has grown exponentially to 155 counties, tapping the community and leadership of over 315,000 girls and youths, as they collectively fight for gender equity and justice. In this month’s Office Hours, we asked Kilby more about her unique approach to leadership, how she found work that feels purposeful, and some of the things she’s learned from the powerful coalition of young people Girl Up serves.
WHAT DOES YOUR ROLE AS A CEO ENTAIL, PARTICULARLY IN THE NONPROFIT SPACE, FOCUSING ON YOUNG GIRLS?
"It is an incredible privilege that I try to earn every day to get to be the CEO of Girl Up. It's an interesting leadership role because I don't feel like it's my movement. It's not about me. And so as the CEO, I often tell our Girl Up leaders that this is their movement, I'm the vessel that makes it possible. You tell me where we go, where we're pointed, and it's my job to get us there. And so I approach leadership as a partnership. I partner with my staff, I partner with my team, but I also partner with the very youth and girls that we serve. I think of myself as the Chief Partnership Officer.”
CAN YOU SHARE SOME OF THE LEARNINGS FROM THIS APPROACH? OR A TIME THINGS DIDN’T GO AS PLANNED?
“There's been a couple times in the last five, six years where [our Girl Up leaders] have reached out to me and said, ‘I don't really love what's happening right now. This isn't what we want you to do.’ Sometimes it’s huge and sometimes it’s specific: ‘We don't want you to partner with this company,’ or ‘We don't want to work with this celebrity.’ I know why we are doing it, and why the situation exists. I know all the challenges that our staff is trying to work through and what they want this organization to look like from the inside out. And what I realized the first time this happened is that [our Girl Up leaders] do not care about my explanation. They want to be heard.
“What I take with me into my leadership is I can explain, I can defend, I can teach, I can do all these things that adults like to do to young people. But first I'm going to listen. And then I'm going to say, ‘What in this can I say yes to?’ I do not start with no, I start with yes. And if I mean when I say this is their movement, that has to always guide me.”
YOU’VE MENTIONED IN THE PAST THAT YOU FELT LIKE YOU FOUND YOUR CAUSE IN WORKING WITH GIRLS AND EDUCATION. CAN YOU SHARE A BIT MORE ABOUT HOW YOU CAME TO THIS WORK AND UNDERSTOOD IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR YOU?
“There were two moments. When I was about to graduate from college, I was set to head to the advertising agency world, and I had this out-of-nowhere kind of moment of, ‘Are you going to go toil away doing this? They don't pay well, you work a lot of hours. Is this the work that you want to grind for in these early years?’ I happened to be in a school project where we were working with a nonprofit doing a PR campaign, and it felt like: ‘Wait, if I'm going to grind and I'm not going to get paid very much, would it be better to put my energy and hours and time towards this greater good?’ That was my first aha moment that the nonprofit industry was potentially a good fit.
“I had eight solid years of really great nonprofit experience and I was good at it. I kept moving through responsibility and raising my title and my leadership, but it wasn't my cause. It was just a good cause. And then one day I learned about Girl Up while I was at my old job and it was a lightning-strike moment. It sparked something totally different for me than just doing good work and being good at it—which had fueled the first half of my career—to be like this is my work. I had a personal connection to what education meant for me when I was younger, what I went through in middle school, and my safe haven in education. And so I turned towards it. Sometimes we have those lightning-bolt moments, but we just keep forging ahead where we already are. Don't just keep down a path. Allow yourself to be surprised and to walk towards those surprises because you never know. You could end up as the CEO of Girl Up. I think being open is what landed me here doing this job. It still feels like my purpose and is still my cause. And I'm just so lucky that I found it when I did.”
AND YOU’VE BEEN WITH GIRL UP FOR NEARLY 13 YEARS! WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU’VE WITNESSED DURING THAT TIME, ESPECIALLY AS OUR WORLD HAS CHANGED SO MUCH?
“I see shifts forward and backward. I think that we, globally, have less rights as girls and women than we did almost 13 years ago. And that's not just here in the US. That's everywhere. It's not better. In fact, it's worse in some ways. But on the flip side of that, I see a much more empowered and powerful youth voice than was there 13 years ago. I think that all of the challenges, all of the crises, and all of the setbacks, rollbacks, divisiveness that just makes it hard to exist as a human right now are actually what has fueled this powerful response. Girls, gender-nonconforming individuals, and youth especially have different tools, have more access, and are starting to be respected. That was not the case when I first started at Girl Up and when Girl Up first started. So I do think there's a shift towards the potential of what this generation will do once they really take up their space and are listened to and respected.”
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"I approach leadership as a partnership. I partner with my staff, I partner with my team, but I also partner with the very youth and girls that we serve. I think of myself as the Chief Partnership Officer."
WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD ABOUT GEN Z GIRLS?
“They're more experienced than we give them credit for. They know more than we did at their age. And that's just a fact, not an opinion. They have so much more access. I will also say that they are just as experienced living through these last 10 years as we are. They're just as experienced in navigating social media. They're just as experienced in navigating the divisive world that we're in, as we are as adults navigating it. So I might have experience to pull from, but I don't have this experience to pull from. It's new for me, too. What makes my experience more valuable than their experience? So I wish that Gen X, Boomers, etc., would just accept the fact that the reality of today is we're all learning together, and when we open ourselves up to find solutions with people who we don't think know as much as us, but actually do, we get different solutions.”
WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT GIRL UP THAT YOU’RE PROUD OF?
“The thing that I'm most proud of is the fact that this is a global community and that the girls and the youth get to connect across differences and find shared purpose. I feel like that is exactly what the world needs right now. When I first joined, it was US/American girls raising money for girls in five developing countries with our UN partners. Today we have clubs in 155 countries and they're all connected. That is a huge accomplishment.
“And then I'll also say one of my proudest individual moments was in 2015. Girl Up was five years old, I had been there for four years. We had our fourth leadership summit, so we were still babies, a new organization. We had about 250 girls in DC and then First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at our leadership summit. I remember standing in the room and the girls just lost their minds when she walked out. It was the screaming, the crying. It was incredible. And I remember being overcome and I started sobbing—and I do not really cry. I remember feeling like we were significant enough for her to be here. And we gave these girls this incredible experience, and it was like that first real glimmer of ‘this is going to be something huge.’”
AND FINALLY, WHAT’S A PIECE OF ADVICE THAT YOU WISH YOU HAD RECEIVED AT THE START OF YOUR CAREER?
“To just trust myself. I think that it took me a long time to trust myself. And then being comfortable with not knowing everything in order to take a step forward. Whether it's to the next opportunity or a decision at work, just step. The most important thing is to take the step, trusting myself to take the right step even if I don't know what's coming. When I get too far away from myself, I make mistakes. When I listen to myself, I'm more surefooted and step in better directions.”
Illustrations by Bijou Karman