Marcia Beckner
Welcome back to the nonprofit CEO Spark podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to Elana Silber. She is the CEO of Sharsheret, an incredible organization. She’s going to talk about it in just a minute. But first, Alana, welcome to the show,
Elana Silber
Marcia. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been following your podcast since you started, and I’ve learned a lot from all of your guests and from you.
And really appreciate every single episode. And I’m honored to be featured today. So thank you. Really excited for our conversation.
Marcia Beckner
Me too. We’re going to have a conversation about how to be a CEO or executive director who follows the founder, and how to lead and grow the organization after a founder has already built a legacy on their own, and how do you take over after that?
And it can be such a challenge for so many of us out there.
And so you’ve got that personal experience that you’re going to bring to us today, but before we get into that and learn about Sharsheret I want to ask you a little off the cuff question because you are saying you like to be like off the cuff, and that’s what we can do here.
My question for you is, what books are you reading or what apps are you using that are helping your health and well being right now, okay. So this is not going to be relevant to everyone, but I am reading a book written by a very top-notch
Elana Silber
breast surgeon here in New York. Her name is Dr. Alisa Port, and she wrote a book called The Breast Advice. And it’s really first of all, she knows her stuff. She’s incredible.
What she does is she takes individual stories and teaches you important topics. It’s everything you need to know about breast cancer from her perspective as a doctor, but also brings the patient perspective.
And as we talk a little bit about the organization that we’re that about Sharsheret this really demonstrates the power of Sharsheret partnering with the medical community to provide this holistic approach to healing when you have breast cancer or ovarian cancer.
So that’s the book I’ve been reading. And so self help. I don’t know.
I think for me, as far as the apps and all that, I disconnect completely from all electronics, anything digital for 25 hours every week from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, and that is the way that I am seeing my taking care of my well being and really unplugging for 24 hours strictly, strictly, strictly, and it is probably the best gift I can give to myself and my family that time away.
Marcia Beckner
That is amazing. I think all of us know that we should probably be doing that. We’re way too addicted to our devices. So thank you for reminding us that that could be a really helpful tip in health and well being.
So, Elana, I don’t
Elana Silber
I think I’m not an addict, Marcia. I am. No, no,
Marcia Beckner
you’re an addict. The other thing, cold turkey or nothing. You know what I mean? Right. Whatever works.
Well, I really want before we get into you know the conversation about succeeding a founder, I want to hear about Sharsheret and what is what is the organization that you lead. How did you get involved in it?
Elana Silber
So Sharsheret is the national Jewish breast cancer and ovarian cancer organization, and we provide free and confidential emotional support, patient navigation, financial assistance, genetic and mental health counseling, and life saving education.
Sharshire, while it’s a Jewish organization, and our expertise is in Jewish families and young women, as it relates to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, 20 to 25% of the people who reach out to Sharsheret do not identify as Jewish, and they are completely participating in all of our programs and services.
And Sharsheret was-we’re at our 25th anniversary. So,
Marcia Beckner
Well, happy anniversary! That’s a major milestone for us as a nonprofit.
Well, we can talk about your specific founder, Rochelle Charettes, who I was a friend of before she unfortunately passed away too young, and she was diagnosed when she was 28 with breast cancer, and at around the same time, I had ovarian cancer, so we bonded immediately.
And when I learned about this community she’d built with Sharsheret I was I was just so impressed with her as a person and the organization that she built and the way in which she did it with such passion and organization and really feeling that people needed to be connected to each other and not go through breast and ovarian cancer alone.
So tell us more about your relationship with Rochelle, and you know what her leadership is like. What was her special leadership strength?
Elana Silber
Right. So in order to understand her leadership style, you. I have to get to know Rochelle as a person, so I’m going to take you back in time to when she was diagnosed, so you and everyone listening can picture what she was.
So you have to imagine this tall woman, big blonde hair, full of personality. She’s 28 years old. She’s a young mom. She has two boys, five and three. She’s a rising attorney.
She was clerking for the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she’s an otherwise healthy young woman, and she’s diagnosed with breast cancer.
And she searches in the community for support to address her concerns as a young woman.
And there were plenty of offers to speak to grandmothers and aunts, but really no one who could help her manage balancing career in cancer, intimacy with her husband, raising her children, managing her faith, until she met another young woman.
And this young woman, her name is Lauren, and Lauren carried Rochelle.
Lauren was about six months ahead of her with her cancer treatment, and she really carried her through those harrowing days before surgery and through chemotherapy, and she saw the value in this peer support, and they looked at each other and they said, “We can’t be the only young women who need this kind of service.
And Rochelle said, “I’m going to start an organization, and if we help five women a year, that’s success.
Fast forward; it is now year 25. We’ve helped over 45,000 women through and men throughout the years, and we could talk a little bit later about how men play a role in this breast and ovarian cancer organization.
Because you’re probably thinking it’s just for women, while it’s primarily for women. Men have a very important role, and we are saving men’s lives if they understand the connection.
And we have already been able to support over 45,000 people, either at increased risk for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, carrying a mutation, or diagnosed with breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and into the survivorship years.
Marcia Beckner
And what is the
Elana Silber
We’ve grown a lot?
Marcia Beckner
You have grown a lot. What is the average? I think I heard on average one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Is that still true?
Elana Silber
Yeah, that’s still the statistics that we’re using, and that the research shows in the American Cancer Society, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
One in about 90. That number kind of switches with ovarian cancer, and so it’s a much more rare cancer, but they’re very, very connected.
As both of them are primarily female cancers, although we know men get male breast cancer, but they also have an people who carry a genetic mutation in the BRACA gene, which is BRCA, stands for breast cancer, have an increased risk for breast cancer up to 80 something percent, and ovarian cancer anywhere from 40 to 60%
So these genetic so if a family has these genetic mutations, they need to keep their eye on breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and also pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and melanoma.
So ovarian cancer and breast cancer have a lot in common in that they are connected through this mutation. So if you’re at increased risk for one because of mutation, you’re also at increased risk for the other, and so are all the women and men in your family.
So that’s why Sharsheret, which Rochelle had founded as a breast cancer organization, eventually evolved into also addressing ovarian cancer.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, the genetic piece is really where I see Sharsheret taking up more and more space and making a louder noise about it because it is the if you can.
This is life saving. If you can determine whether you have a genetic marker or not, that can depend on different preventative procedures you might be able to have, or and it impacts your family as well.
Elana Silber
Yeah, I mean, I think that genetics is the future for medicine, and everything eventually will be attributed to the genetics that we have in our body, our genes that we.
But we’re not there yet, so there’s a lot that we need to do, and there’s still some things that have not been identified.
I mean, we have families that are riddled with breast cancer and ovarian cancer and prostate cancer, and there’s no known genetic mutation.
There probably is a right now. There are two BRCA gene mutations that we know about, but maybe there’s BRCA 345, So, and there are other mutations, check two and PALB two, but so Char Sherid is based on this relationship that Rochelle had with Lauren-that’s what they started as a peer support network.
But for example, the question of genetics would come up when we spoke to women, and so then we said we have to start a genetics program, and that’s how things evolved.
But I actually met Rochelle. I was a volunteer, and she was speaking in my community about this organization that she was getting off the ground, so she was looking for.
It was very grassroots, looking for people who had skills that could come help build the organization. So we had a speaking engagement in a local community center, and at the end of the meeting, she or her after her remarks and introducing the organization, she gave out these signs.
Sheets, you know, this is like before Google Forms, you know, aging myself. And on the bottom of the sheet, it said, you know, thank you so much for coming. Can you, if you want to volunteer, write what skill you can bring to the organization?
Because she had nothing; it was just her, right? So, I looked to my right, and the person sitting next to me was a lawyer, and they were going to give free legal help. Great.
The other person was a graphic artist, and she was going to help design brochures. And I’m thinking, okay, I have an MBA in healthcare. I don’t know. I don’t know. Like I don’t have skill.
So I just wrote that I’m organized. So the next week she calls us all in for this volunteer meeting. Great. I’m stuffing envelopes. I’m so happy. A really nice crowd.
Rochelle has all this energy and you know motivation, and you know she’s doing great. You know this is all in the middle of chemotherapy and everything. She’s just doing it all. She’s like superhuman.
And then we sit in a circle, and she says, “Hey, um, we’re I’m going over the volunteer sheets, and who is Alana Silver?
And I was like, “Go to be kidding me! What? Why are you calling my name out? I was like happy in my corner, stuffing my envelopes, and she said you wrote that you are organized.
You’re going to organize the very first Sharsharet Volunteer Appreciation Dinner in like three months from now.
I was like, you didn’t see no to Rochelle, so we talked about leadership style.
Yeah, she had it from before she had a staff before anything there was no it was just Rochelle, so I was like of course like I don’t even know this person but I was so compelled by the cause understanding that it’s like a woman’s issue family issue community issue like and I had the time I had four little kids at the time and I was looking for work so but something meaningful and I also had pretty close connections in the community, so that helps with fundraising.
So and so I said, okay. So we organized this first dinner. I was telling you, I was so nervous because Rochelle speaks a mile a minute, is brilliant.
I mean, who goes to the Supreme Court? You got to be brilliant. And here I am, like okay.
So we ended up doing this event. She gave me very little direction, but enough to know what the big do’s and do nots are. But after that, it was like free reign.
I was calling in all my friends and my mother. Like calling my mother at her office. Can you help me with this email? Like it was, email was new.
At the end of the day, we pulled off a really good event. All the volunteers came. We had over 100 people.
Elana Silber
People made donations. It was successful. And then Rochelle said to me, “Do you want to work at Sharsharet?
And I was like, “Yeah, we really do. And I had grown up in a family where both my parents were very involved with community service, so it was like in my blood, and so it was just the two of us.
And then things started rolling, and I was working part time at the beginning, but really full time because I was so excited.
I mean, even I remember later in the years, Rochelle said, “Alana, the reason you work so hard is you’re trying to keep up with me.
So this is the type of person she was, but she was right. Like all I wanted to do, she had this kind of.
She was magnetic. Like you wanted to be. She was very attractive. Like you wanted to be with her, and you wanted to excel with her.
So it was kind of like I was so motivated, and because she really brought meaning to the cause, so yes, it was kind of like a business job, right?
I wasn’t. I’m not a counselor. I’m not a social worker. I was building programs and growing the reach and attracting people, so they learn all this information, get the support they need, and she is just a fantastic mentor and a motivator, and a little bit scary.
Not gonna lie, a little bit scary.
Marcia Beckner
She
Elana Silber
It was great. High
Marcia Beckner
standards, high standards.
Elana Silber
Yeah, yeah.
Marcia Beckner
Well, tell us about her. She had to keep fighting cancer. It kept coming back. Yeah. Kind of tell us about when you knew the end was near, and how did she ask you to take over the organization, or how did that happen?
Elana Silber
So, about a few years in, she-I guess it was about 2009. So it was eight years since her initial diagnosis, and she found out that she was living with metastatic breast cancer.
That means that the cancer had spread beyond her breasts, and she knew her time was limited, and she was a very frank and open person.
And I think in her mind, while she didn’t really say this, she was preparing me and the organization for her for her passing.
She didn’t say it to me in those words, but very often she would say Sharsheret, which was this growing breast cancer and ovarian cancer organization, is not my story.
It’s not my story because, first of all, most people that call Sharsheret while they’re going through a difficult time do well afterwards, having a recurrence and metastatic breast cancer.
It is not typical for most people with early stage breast cancer, so she understood that her time was limited.
So she increased the speed of everything because she wanted to get so much done, and at the same time tried to take her face and her story out of this and make it about the 1000s of women and men that we were helping be the face of the story, while still having a very strong presence.
So, the question at the time in the community was, the perception was this was Rochelle’s organization, while she was really trying hard to make it about all the people’s stories.
So we don’t know at that point, like, do people really believe that or what? But that was what we were working on, and she kind of knew what she wanted.
She had these two boys. She had gotten married during that time, so she was kind of distracted with her personal life, and I didn’t realize it.
But ultimately, I was taking on a lot more responsibility. I, of course, just became. This was so much more than a job to me. This became like my life, and so I didn’t even realize how much I was doing.
I mean, I know I was up all night every night.
My family was involved, like, but I didn’t realize how much of the leading of the organization she was actually leading to me because she was always there, like, like checking in, like, oh, you know, proofing this, and I don’t like this, or I like this or like, and I was always looking for her approval.
At one point, when her health was really failing, probably you know six months before she passed away, she said, “Alan, I’m going in for this procedure, and I won’t have access to anything for a while.
And she said to me, “I’m just I would like you to unofficially take over for this for these six weeks that I’ll be in the specific treatment, and she said, and I said, well, you know, I can’t really take over.
You’re still, she said, if I promise you that I won’t be critical of anything you’re doing, and critical doesn’t not mean negative or positive, but I don’t critique.
Maybe it’s a better word. Will you do this and just move forward? And so for me, I was always number two, and I guess it was a comfort to know like if anything goes wrong, Rochelle takes the fall.
If I need any help, Rochelle will be there. And it was the first time that I was tested, and it was supposed to be for a finite five weeks, whatever.
And so I took on that role, and I started to make decisions, and I realized, you know, I kind of was making this decision before, but yeah, she would tweak it, and then she and then she came back to the organization and working, but very limited.
And then when she passed away, that was January, so maybe this was like May time. She said, “Alan, I you know, I called you know me into her room.
I would go to the hospital and visit her every day and bring her work. Her family wanted to kill me because they’re like every time you come, she gets agitated.
I’m like, and she says you got to keep coming. This is what keeps me alive. Bring me work. And her sister’s telling me, you know, you can’t keep coming here.
Elana Silber
Her friends are trying to lock me out, and we became the best of friends.
So anyway, one of those times that we were in the hospital, she said, Alana, I know you know. I know that you know the end is coming, and my legacy is my two boys.
And sure, Sharsharet. Promise me you’ll make it grow. And I was like, okay, so much pressure.
And I said to you, Rochelle, I don’t know. I don’t know if I, you know, like it’s too much.
And she said, Alana, you’ve been doing it for five years. I’m telling you, you could do this.
And so then I had that in my head, and I was like, “The truth is, I was. But it was really nice, and maybe this is-I don’t know if it’s my own lack of confidence at the time.
I was like, “I don’t want to be number one. I like being that number two.
And then when she passed away, you know. Everyone was sending emails and condolences, and I, you know, and we also were able to convince the community that Sharsheret can continue without Rochelle.
But there were emails that came along and said, “Oh, Sharsheret is done now that the founder’s gone.
And I saw those emails, or I got hundreds of calls. Oh, you have big shoes to fill, but ultimately, I think knowing the back of my head that we had worked together and I was doing it, it wasn’t out of nowhere, and I really helped build Sharsharet to that point.
So
Marcia Beckner
yeah, yeah. It sounds like an identity shift needed to happen.
Like you identified as the number two, supporting you know Rochelle, and now you’re number one.
And how do you make that identity shift so that you can not necessarily fill her shoes or not fill her shoes at all, and just walk in your own shoes in the direction that you know she’d be proud of, but it may have been different than what she was originally thinking.
Elana Silber
Definitely, we change that, but I also think that transition when you go and you take over the founders space, you have to create your own network.
So I remember when I took on the. Position as number one. As number two, I didn’t so much have peers who were leading organizations, and I didn’t really work with a board.
You know, I came to the board meetings, but I wasn’t the board connector, and the board members loved me, and we talked.
But it wasn’t my responsibility. Now I had to manage a board and staff, but the staff I had been doing because Sharsheret, while we started, is only the two of us, you know.
We now have over 50 staff members, and she always used me as a buffer to the staff. I was good at that.
So, the two things that I was really worried about was managing a board and working at growing it, interfacing with it, using it, leveraging it.
I didn’t know anything, and I didn’t have this peer network. Like I remember Shell making all these meetings with other executive directors and CEOs, and they knew her name.
They’re like, “Ha ha, everyone’s laughing, and I don’t know anybody.
So I was very lucky that as I took on this position, there were two fellowships: one called CEO onboarding, and something else called Project Accelerate, that were looking to bring into a cohort CEOs who had less than 18 months experience, whatever.
And I joined, and that’s exactly what I learned. They taught me how to manage a board. I met with other peers.
To this day, they become my peer network that I turn to for questions. I mean, certainly over the years on how dealing with compensation with employees like this was something that I didn’t know how to do so well.
How to recruit to the board? What? How to evaluate a board? How to even run a board meeting? Who runs the board meeting?
And you know, I put my own spin on everything, but having those two leadership training cohorts, and this was pre-COVID, so a lot of in-person, and then all these weekly Zooms, and and now and now I have that peer network, and you learn a lot, and like I think that’s what this podcast is, right?
You’re learning from others, and that’s where I did a lot of my transitioning from number two to number one.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, that’s why it’s so important. It’s like the community that you’re building with Sharsharet for Cancer survivors and their families is what we need as executive directors and CEOs.
We need our own peer peer support network. It’s vital. Someone I talked to was in one, and they called it a lifeboat or a lifeline.
And how would you describe, you know, your like? What would it be like if you didn’t have this peer network? I think it wouldn’t be as effective
Elana Silber
as I am. Like I think that I’m always looking to hear what other people are doing. People are saying because I do think I can hone in on that one, and we call it even at the office, like one that one nugget.
That’s you go to these conferences, and sometimes you could sit there for days, and what is new, and what is that, or you’re on a podcast, and then that one nugget, and you’re like, I would never have known that if I wasn’t with these people.
And also, you learn from when they turn to you. It’s a real give and take situation. So then it forces you to look into yourself and say, “How am I doing things? How can I do it better?
I mean, also one of the things that I do, and I don’t know if other organizations do this, because Rochelle and I created this bond, like friends.
Like I even remember when she interviewed me, she said, “You know, this is a professional organization.
You know, I’m hiring you. We weren’t friends, but we ended up being the best of Friends, but I always make it my business whenever we do any kind of public events.
Like we have events coming up in a couple of weeks, I always bring her into the conversation with a photo, with a mention, because I feel like while she set this up and I did take over, we’ve been very blessed to have success and a good reputation.
I want to keep her name alive, and I want to keep her vision as our guiding light-not on the day to day, more at the very high level.
Like she has, she has children. She now has grandchildren. Her son is on the board of Sharsharet.
Like he was five when she was diagnosed. Now he’s a father of three, an attorney, and I think keeping her in the conversation without having her run the operations makes it meaningful.
And I feel like I’m giving back to her as well. I feel a very deep connection to her and to what she wanted.
But like you said, I’m sure she would have taken it in a totally different direction. She was a lawyer, probably would have been involved more with legislation and advocacy, but it had to do with what I knew best, while still keeping her vision very much central to a lot of what we’re doing.
Marcia Beckner
And you do that so beautifully. I want to just underscore that that is one of the reasons that Char Shearet has grown to 50 people and 45,000 people served.
I mean, that’s something to really pause and take in and be proud of.
And we were talking earlier, kind of off camera, about culture and what you think about. Building a culture now, and what makes you I know your culture is so successful.
How do you do it? What do you think about it? That’s what you’re responsible for when it comes to that.
Elana Silber
So first of all, you’re right. The people at Churchire who have been there. I mean, we just celebrated every week at our staff meetings.
If there’s an anniversary of someone who started the organization. We do a work anniversary. There’s a song, and then a supervisor will talk about the staff member who’s there.
So the two that I had this week, one was here 10 years, one here is 11, and these are not you know older people.
They’re in there. They started in their early 30s, and they’re you know, they’re still here, and we have a lot of staying power, Joshua.
Because I think number one, there isn’t a person out there that doesn’t know someone who has breast cancer or ovarian cancer or something in their cancer in their family.
So by definition, it’s a meaningful place to work. We are 100% female right now, and we’ve always been 99.9.
We’ve had maybe one male staff member throughout the years, but right now we’re 100% women, which I am proud about.
And I came on, and I was balancing or integrating work and family, and it doesn’t have to be a traditional family.
It doesn’t have to be a mom with kids at home. You could be caring for your parents. You could be caring for friends.
You can have it means really personal responsibility that you have outside the work.
And Sharsharet was always about flexibility and tailoring it. So for really good staff, which we have like a superstar team, we’ve created these flexible schedules so that people can try to balance.
We don’t really believe there’s balance. It’s really integration because you can’t go anywhere without someone asking, “What do you do? and then talking about Sharjah.
But we really have this culture of I understand that you also have a personal life, and at the end of the day, if you get your work done, and we are productive, and we move forward, and we get people to a healthier outcome because that’s our goal.
That’s okay, and it doesn’t have to fit into a box of nine to five. I mean, we have people working all over the country, all over the world.
So there are different time zones. People, some in the offices, some at home, and we’ve made it work. And I think people stay because of that.
So we understand the life challenges that people have beyond the workplace, we’re very much promoting learning. We’re always asking people to be better at what they’re doing.
Very also, we have no bureaucracy. Like it’s honestly, if you culture share it, you’re going straight to the CEO, the COO. It’s not like there’s no red tape.
We are completely independent, and we are an organization where there’s a lot of integration between all the different teams.
And I think we’ve also developed a culture of philanthropy. Every single person at Sharsheret is also a donor, and every staff member at Sharsheret is a donor.
Marcia Beckner
Is that a requirement? It is
Elana Silber
not a requirement. It’s a. It just happens, and we are very proud of it.
So you could be, and we’re not asking people to give beyond their means, but investing in the organization, whether it’s $18 or it’s $1,800, and these staff members are working.
You can imagine they’re working their tails off, and they are still making a donation.
And when we meet as a group, very often someone who could be a social worker on the team is talking about a way that they were able to raise money for the organization to advance our programs.
So every person is a donor, every staff member, and every staff member has referred someone to the organization, either themselves.
We’ve had people on staff who needed charity. Many many people on staff. I mean, we’re all women.
Hopefully, we’re all going to turn 40. We’re all going to be going for mammograms. We’re all going to have families that need char share.
So everyone is involved. So I think that’s part of staying power. Also, we have a really good reputation.
We’re very honest. We are. We just really believe in what we’re doing. This is more than a job.
And for those that don’t see it as more than a job, while it’s not a requirement, they don’t stay as long.
But I’d say we have a really high retention rate and long tenures.
Marcia Beckner
That is a huge commitment that you’re able to generally like to capitalize on, but in the best way because it you’re like you’re turning your mission inside out and this is what I talk about with the cares model a lot.
It is like if something isn’t working in your organization, are you fulfilling your mission internally as well as externally, and your external mission from you know someone like me who’s an outsider is you build connection and community, and that’s what you do inside the staff and why you have staying power.
And it’s it’s such it’s so easy to get caught up in like why isn’t this person doing that or this person they’re not feeling a sense of.
Inside your community, which extends beyond you to the community you exist to serve, which for you are cancer survivors and families and anybody touched by cancer.
So yeah, I just think that that’s a really powerful, hopefully nugget or takeaway that people can take here because how you’re talking about building culture really costs no money.
You know the weekly recognition.
Like I think some people think, oh, we recognize people you know once in a while, but it sounds like you have structured it and and systematized it into weekly meetings, which is a lot of recognition, and and having someone you know talk well about some you know the supervisor talk well about somebody is something anyone can implement if you know they may mean to get around to it but you’ve just got to add it into an agenda because everyone’s so busy.
Do you what else what else are you doing that’s really actionable and approachable for most?
Building a Culture of Participation
Elana Silber
I think also, well, that’s for the step. But also, when I switched over to being the CEO, I also built a cabinet of amazing people.
So we have a C-suite. I mean, they are like I couldn’t do anything without them. So they all bring ideas to the table, and they all are overachievers, and they are, and they’re all so nice.
They’re just nice people, and they’re such a pleasure to work with. And so each one has a very different background, but they’re covering all spots of the organization.
Like we have the chief development officer, we have the chief services officer who oversees like all the social workers and the genetic counselors, and then we have the chief national engagement officer, and then we have a chief regional officer who like because we have offices all over the country, and then we have an amazing CEO COO also.
So while it sounds like I have this amazing leadership style, it’s really because I lean on these amazing people who are in the C-suite, and it really works.
Like I didn’t have that in the beginning when it was Rochelle. It was just Rochelle and me, right? Because we grew from the grassroots.
It was like Alana did everything, and I was like, here I am, facing everyone. How am I going to do everything?
So I started to bring on a COO.
That was the first thing. Was like, wow, that’s like it wasn’t in the budget. I just did it, and then I realized like every department needs, and these people are, and I’m thinking that each one of them has been there at least 10 years, if not, and some have been there up to 20.
So it’s been like three of them came on because we didn’t have; they weren’t even on staff. Like I needed them, and then others moved up, and that’s another thing.
What we’re trying to do at Sharsharet is really give opportunity for people to, because nobody wants to leave, be able to move them up as much as we can within the organization.
If we can, you know, there’s a limit. But I want to show people that you can start as a junior person because I think that’s what I did.
I literally started. I was a program coordinator. I don’t even know what I was. I was writing the weekly, the monthly newsletter.
You know, I wasn’t maybe calling, trying to make parlor meetings, and then I was able to move up to a program officer and then a CEO.
And so, but a lot we’re trying to build in the organization how people can increase their responsibility and hopefully also increase their compensation because that also keeps people there.
You want to compensate these really good people, but you’re still a nonprofit.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, and by having a culture of philanthropy where everyone’s thinking like a philanthropist and ambassadors, a culture of ambassadors is really the right approach?
I think from any leadership team how can you get everyone involved, not just you have a development team and they raise the money, but you spread it all out.
I mean, we need us all to move forward. How do you position that so that you get buy in with that and not resistance.
Elana Silber
So I think it’s about participation. Like if you’re going to spread it out, it has to work both ways.
It can’t be that everyone’s in development and then no one in development helps the what we call the clinical department.
So, so as long as everyone is doing something for someone else, it works well. We don’t have this culture of dumping. It’s not about dumping, Char Sheard.
So, for example, especially now with AI, right? So, marketing. Our marketing team is amazing, but so overwhelmed because they have to do all the communications.
But we’re also doing educational events. We are doing 900 educational events every year, starting on college campuses and then moving up from that.
So that means that 900 flyers have to be drafted. 900, you know, things need to be designed.
So now with AI, some people are doing their own flyers, like they’re not going to bother marketing. Not that it’s a bother.
Marketing is happy to help, but you know, let’s take some of the pressure off. Maybe some smaller events now with Canva.
I mean, Canva and ChatGPT and you know whatever they’re using. So we’re seeing like on the local level taking some of the pressure off of the marketing team, maybe to leverage AI in that way.
We’re also seeing that, for example, if our development team goes out and meets with a sponsor who wants to work on a program, the development team will start to build the bones of the program.
Even though they don’t have the clinical background, they’ll bring it to the clinical and say, “Are these things that you can do? I’ve been working with a donor.
Let me help you. They’ll draft the grants. Sometimes grants will be drafted by someone else.
We don’t have a grant writer at Sharsharet. Everybody is writing grants. We don’t get enough grants, but that’s another story.
But I think it’s about each team stepping outside of what they’re supposed to be doing. Let’s say by the letter of the law, if you are a social worker.
But we have social workers who are involved with fundraising. We have fundraisers who are not necessarily involved with social work, but they might be able to speak to somebody before it goes to them about what Sharshara does.
We train the team on what to say if someone has cancer because friends approach you, and you can leverage some of the social work skills.
They’ll teach us how to do that. So until we can get them moved over to that, it’s about everybody willing to do for other people.
I’m not going to say that we don’t get stressed and behind the ball, and everybody’s busy because we put all this pressure on ourselves to be.
When people have cancer, they don’t have time. There’s serious financial toxicity, time toxicity. So we want to get back to people right away.
We want to help people, you know. So we do have that pressure, but everybody really wants the other person to be successful, so they’ll take on some of the work.
Marcia Beckner
That’s really beautiful. I think where other organizations struggle is when someone’s like, “That’s not my job. Go to marketing. That’s not my job.
Go to development, and that just gets organizations really stuck and not focused externally on what the community needs right now, so that just like the mindset of the culture, where we just help each other out, not in a dumping way.
Like how you said, we don’t have a culture of dumping yet. We have a culture of participation where if a call comes in, I’m going to answer it if I can, not just shuttle it off to someone else because it’s not my department.
That just doesn’t build a healthy culture when people are thinking that way. So I, but you
Elana Silber
do have to balance it because on the other hand, you don’t want to take away what like if something needs approval for an expense, like and you might know that it’s okay.
You still have to send it to the director of finance or whatever.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, all these things are good. But we do have our days when I think when Rochelle was around, I said like we’re working so much because she’s like creating so much work.
It’s like whatever project it can be more work and work. Rochelle’s been gone over 11 years, and we have so much work going on.
And so I’m wondering now if maybe I was the driver for so much work back then. I don’t because I was the one who was managing the team and all that.
I’m thinking, oh, if Rochelle’s not around, I’m sure things will be quieter. But no, so it’s just it was yours.
I might be me. I might be. It might be me.
Marcia Beckner
You might look in the mirror. Yeah. Yeah.
One final question: When you look ahead into the next five years in this organization’s chapter beyond Rochelle, what do you see?
Looking Ahead: Next Five Years
Elana Silber
I see an opportunity to really save lives. I think the more people we speak to, the more people access our programs, our services.
I think we can save lives. There’s a lot of advancement in the medical community. They’re hopefully leveraging AI in a positive way to see massive numbers, and we can see.
I mean, one example is that Sharsheret, like we said, we helped 45,000 women and men over the last 25 years.
We’re now creating a registry so that the data that we have will be formalized and will be usable for research, and that’s going to be our personal brig project, and it’ll be for the Jewish community and beyond.
There’s no one who has. We have women who’ve told us that they were diagnosed in 2001.
Now their daughters are involved, and we’ve been in touch with them, so we’ve built 25 years of community trust with data that’s been great for us, so we can help people, but not good enough for research.
And I think if we can get everyone into a registry, you know, owned by Sharsheret, where we’ll manage where it goes, and we do research, maybe we can change the trajectory of cancer in this group, in this population, and beyond, maybe with life, you know, we work with pharmaceutical companies.
Maybe drugs will be better. Maybe drugs will have less side effects as they hear the voices of our registry.
So the next five years is focused on taking this data and saving lives.
Closing Reflections on Legacy
Marcia Beckner
That’s wonderful, Alana. Thank you so much for coming on to share your story.
And how you’ve really successfully taken the legacy of a founder up and beyond. I’m sure of Rochelle’s wildest expectations.
Elana Silber
I don’t know. I hope so. I mean, the truth is, she’s a tremendous mentor, a really close friend, and a wonderful human being.
And I like to channel all the good things that she shared with me, and try to share that with others too.
I’m very grateful for what she’s given me and what she’s given to the community.
She really, like you said, is a lifeline, a lifeboat, a life jacket. Whatever she created has made a difference in so many lives.
So we’re grateful to her.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah. Well, thank you so much. All right. We will see you in the next episode, and until then, remember you are meant for great things, and you don’t have to burn out to prove it.
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