Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leslie Beasley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Leslie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Years ago, I remember reading about a study that was done on people who were over 80 years old. If they could do life over again, what would they do differently? Taking more risks was one of their top 3 answers. This has always stuck in my mind. I lean towards risk-taking pretty naturally, but after reading about this study, it became a more intentional practice. You can’t take action on big dreams without taking risks. 

In my current role as CEO of Miracle Foundation, I took a major risk by completely changing the focus of our work, which hadn’t changed in almost two decades. Since 2000, Miracle Foundation has focused on improving orphanages, making them as good as possible for the children living in them. All the needs of the children were provided for within the walls of the orphanage. But ultimately, the data revealed that even the best orphanage is detrimental to the long-term mental health and stability of a child. And so, I led our organization through a complete change in strategy. Instead of making orphanages better, we began working on getting children out of orphanages and into families. We also began working on preventing more children from entering orphanages in the first place. This was a major risk that initially swam against the current of popular beliefs.

At first, our board of directors and donors did not understand the shift in strategy; everything was at risk. But we stayed focused on what’s best for children and didn’t allow the fear of failure to get in the way.

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

I visited an orphanage in Uganda studying ways to make orphanages better. At that point, with my work, I had been in dozens of orphanages and had seen the suffering of many children—but this visit was different. As soon as I entered the building, a little boy, about two years old, came up to me and lifted his arms so I would pick him up, which I did. Once he was being held, he did not want me to put him down. I was there for hours and held him the entire time. He had a distended belly, revealing his malnourishment. He was barefoot and dirty with soft brown eyes. He laid his head on my chest and soaked in the opportunity to be held in loving arms. I was happy to do it. When it was time to leave, I peeled him away and said goodbye. As we were pulling away in our car, I noticed he had run to the opposite side of the orphanage, away from all the other children. There he was, behind a tall fence, by himself, looking directly at me, with the biggest tears running down his face. He wasn’t screaming or holding his arms out, he was just standing with tears flowing, not breaking eye contact with me.

With that look, in that moment, something snapped in me. I realized how incredibly traumatizing it is to an orphaned child to have people come and go with no real commitment. While I had a powerful experience that stays with me to this day, that little boy had attached to me in that short time and was feeling abandoned all over again. He didn’t need a temporary hug. He needed a forever family. He needed to be loved and held every day. We could improve his nutrition, we could give him a bed, and even make sure he went to school, but that still wouldn’t take the place of him having a home to call his own.

That experience shifted my worldview, and I became an advocate for children in families. When I made this switch and began to dig deeper, I was surprised to discover that it’s actually five-times cheaper to support a child in a family than to support a child in an institution. Isn’t that crazy? The world has been supporting a much more expensive option that is worse for a child’s ultimate well- being. When we know better, we do better. So that’s what we set out to do.

At Miracle Foundation today, we unite children with families, we prevent children from entering the system in the first place, and we stabilize children who are in institutions awaiting placement with a family. As we do this work, there is always a sense of urgency because children are waiting. The time to act is now.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

My best advice to managing a team boils down to three things: 1)      No Negativity:   A core value of every team should be to have a positive work environment. A happy individual is a more productive individual. Negativity can creep into the workplace and is very hard to remove. So we prevent it from entering from the beginning as much as possible. We do this in a number of ways but most importantly in the interview process by hiring those who share this philosophy. 2)      Strengths-Based Management: Identify each person’s strengths and put them in a position to maximize those strengths. Very often, team members spend too much time working in areas that are not in their sweet spot; causing them to be unhappy and unproductive.  The best thing a leader can do is to know their people well enough to guide them into the right roles and help them work out of their strengths. 3)      Let them do their job:  When people are in the right positions, maximizing skills in a positive environment, then it’s time to trust them and get out of the way. Give them the room to dream big and also room to make mistakes. This is often quoted but it can be hard to put into practice. Guide and mentor your team and then trust them to do the work.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Outside of Miracle Foundation, Integrity, Transparency, and Results are why our reputation is so strong within our sector. But inside Miracle Foundation, I work hard to build an equally strong reputation, and that starts with leadership. Being a good leader is in large part about being a good listener and being a good, decisive decision-maker. I believe decisiveness is a key to individual and organizational success. It is better to make a decision, maintain momentum, and course correct when needed than to get stuck in indecisiveness. On top of this, I want all of my team members to feel appreciated and heard. As Maya Angelou once famously said: “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” This really rings true to me and helps guide me as a leader.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.miraclefoundation.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themiraclefoundation
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMiracleFoundation.org
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-beasley-4b378275/

Image Credits
Whitney Milam, John Marshall