We recently connected with Muriel Smith and have shared our conversation below.

Muriel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I think the biggest risk in my career that I have taken is leaving a job where I was comfortable, successful, and well-liked to begin a different journey. Throughout my career, I have always said that I wanted to run a small nonprofit organization. I wanted to use the knowledge and skills I had amassed to make a good organization, a great organization. The change was risky because the organization I was going to was very young and the climate was volatile. But, I believed that I could stabilize it and really make a difference in the structure of the organization. Several staff members ended of quitting and so I had to learn about the organization, hire new staff, manage the ones who stayed and try to hold together an already fragile situation. For 2 years, I experienced the same cycle of stability, then volatility, and it was extremely stressful. Then the pandemic hit and we all had to work remotely, which was a blessing in disguise because the physical environment was the biggest issue. Eventually, though, I decided that it was time to move on.

Muriel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I received my bachelor’s in communication with the intent of seeking out a career in public relations. I wanted to be the voice of a company and help them with its public persona. What I found when I entered the market was that I didn’t possess enough experience yet to qualify for those types of positions. So, I ended up falling into nonprofit work instead. Most small nonprofit organizations need staff who are jack and jill of all trades because they do have a large enough budget to hire all of the staff they require. I was able to get in on the ground level, doing mostly administrative work, but built up my experience and skills to take on higher-level positions. I have done public relations/communications, fundraising, volunteer coordination, and community engagement, and been part of management teams for organizations. But, the pinnacle of what I wanted to do with my career, was to run a small nonprofit organization myself. I have amassed so much experience and knew that I could be at the helm. So, I set a 5-year goal for myself and continued working towards that goal until I found the perfect organization that matched my personal mission with my professional one.

Any advice for managing a team?

I think successfully managing a team should include 3 elements:

1) A clear understanding of their own responsibilities
2) A desire to achieve team and organizational goals
3) Regular check-ins by managers and supervisors

Whenever I hire someone, I provide them with a 30/60/90 plan so that they can ease into their new position and learn about the organization before really jumping into their work. I also have everyone meet with the new person one on one to discuss not only their job, but how the two of them will work together to accomplish their jobs and the mission of the organization. Everyone develops their individual personal and professional goals that roll up into the organizational goals. This helps them see their piece in the goals of the organization. I encourage staff to meet with each regularly outside of our weekly staff meetings. Especially those who’s jobs need to work in tandem.

Also to foster a positive team culture and environment, we celebrate successes of each team member, both personal and professional ones. It is important the staff is seen as human beings first and not just a worker for your organization.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

One of the main things that helped build my reputation was utilizing LinkedIn to establish myself as a trusted source of information in my area. Another thing that helped me was connecting with others in my field to build a network of colleagues who had worked with me and could attest to my area of expertise.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stldiaperbank.org
• Instagram: @stldiaperbank