I did something at our Women of Excellence awards reception last month that I’ve never done before. I cried. On stage. In front of a packed-full audience…I cried.
I was the only person on stage, so I stopped talking, put my head down and put my hand to my chest.
Some kind person from the audience yelled, “Take your time!”
Every year, the format of the evening is: I introduce a short video interview for each honoree. The audience then watches each woman tell their personal story in their own words. The videos are always touching. Always meaningful and inspiring. Everything at the event was going great until the very last video, when this sweep of emotion came out of nowhere.
I was introducing our Leadership honoree, Jennifer Dubrow Weiss, who is the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey. In her video, Jen describes the many community programs JFed offers to everyone. For my intro, I had planned to mention something Jen had talked about, but didn’t make it into the final cut: blameless problem solving. I thought I would use that as an example of the type of leader Jen is.
But everything changed when I sent all the videos to the team at SJ Mag for them to watch. And on the morning of the awards reception, I received this Slack message:
I cried the most at Jennifer’s because she and JFed have profoundly affected our lives directly. Because of their Soups & Sweets culinary training and job support, our daughter has successfully worked at a good paying (union) job for the last 5 years. She also participates in their wonderful social groups and day program and has made genuine friends.
The message stopped me and, for some reason, changed everything. All the times I had watched the videos during editing, I thought it was wonderful that JFed had programs that helped people. But I thought of it in a very abstract way – like, they’re helping people way over there.
But they were helping people I knew. Changing their lives actually. And I realized that odds were good they were helping people everyone in the audience knew, people who they worked with or people who lived on their street. All nonprofits do, it just doesn’t really hit us until someone sends you a Slack message and suddenly you wake up.
I tried my best to explain all this to everyone in the audience but apparently the message had impacted me more than I thought, and I started to cry. I took a minute (felt like a few hours), talked slowly, and got through it.
I asked everyone in the audience to remember what my team member wrote as they watched the video. I encouraged them to not just listen to a leader talk about programs, but to try and really see how people are helped, how lives are “profoundly affected.”
I think the last line of my co-worker’s note is what really touched me. She said her daughter had made “genuine friends” because of the programs. There’s not much more a parent would wish for their child. How wonderful it must be when someone who doesn’t know you, who’s at work a few towns over, creates a program that brings a genuine friend into your family.
Watch all the Women of Excellence honoree videos.
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