We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jim Grant. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jim below.

Jim, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

I was working in IT, and recently engaged to get married. I had recently experienced a personal trauma which caused me to re-evaluate my life, in particular my career path, which included a lot of travel around the US and sometimes overseas. It was lucrative, but I had come to realize not fulfilling in any meaningful way. After a lot of soul-searching, talking with my fiancee, and a volunteer trip to a maternal and infant health center in Haiti, I decided to leave IT behind and embark on a new nonprofit career. The first year I only made 10% of my last year’s IT income, but I was much happier.

Lesson learned: fulfillment is better than money. Yes it was difficult at first, but over time I worked my way up to a moderately decent salary (still less then half of my prior IT income), but I can honestly say, 18 years later, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

After leaving my prior IT career, I met the founder of a maternal and infant health center at an informal community meeting in a local restaurant. After a 15-20 discussion, I agreed to visit the center for 2 weeks to learn all about it’s purpose and operations. By the end of my visit I knew I had found a new purpose in life.

Global Birthing Home Foundation, for which I am now the Executive Director, is the fiscal sponsor and provide operational oversight for Maison de Naissance (MN) maternal and infant health center in Torbeck, Haiti. MN provides pre- and postnatal care, deliveries, STI testing and treatment, family planning, well-baby care, reproductive health, and community health outreach services.

The services provided by MN, in a largely remote, rural, and impoverished region, are lifesaving for the communities served. There are no other easily accessible or affordable providers for this region, with a population of roughly 80,000 plus an unknown number of persons displaced from the capital city region by insecurity and extreme violence.

I am primarily responsible for fundraising, budget management, donor acquisition, grant writing, and oversight of general operations at the center in Haiti.

What I value the most about my current position is that we’ve been able to thrive during a particularly difficult time in Haiti, when many other small to medium NGO health operations have ceased operating and closed their facilities. The UN estimates only 40% of the health centers operating in Haiti prior to 2021 are still operating. We, in contrast, are expending our operations to reach more families and communities without access to the maternal and infant health services.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

It is critical to see and treat employees, volunteers, and external partners as people not just assets. I saw this more in my previous IT career, but it’s a problem in the non-profit world as well. As a rule, happy workers work harder and more efficiently. Often it is as effective (or more effective) to motivate employees with appreciation and respect as it is with monetary compensation.

I recently acquired a new public health manager for our operations in Haiti because her superiors did not make the distinction between her value as a person vs. an asset to their operations.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

This goes back to the point I made earlier about being fulfilled by your job.

Fourteen years ago, while I was visiting our center in Haiti, my son lost his battle with periodic bouts of severe depression and took his own life.

I returned home immediately, of course, and spent several weeks wondering how I could every go back to Haiti again. When I confided in a close friend how I was struggling with this question, he offered to go with me whenever I was ready to return. Within a couple of weeks I was able to schedule a trip with my friend, and return to the work that I am still passionate about and fulfills my life.

After that, I was able to manage travel on my own again, and to this day visit Haiti 3-4 times ever year for 2-3 weeks at a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.globalbirthinghomefoundation.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gbhf_haiti/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GBHFound
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-birthing-home-foundation/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MNHaiti/videos

Image Credits

Kolette Bury, Dani Jolivert, Consuelo Alzamora