Client: Black Teacher Collaborative

Industry: Education Non-Profit Management

Founder & CEO: Hiewet Senghor 

Website: www.blackteachercollaborative.org

Core challenges: Need for increased capacity and strategic counsel in a start-up environment

Client Spotlight: vChief blog

What were the pain points you were facing that made you decided you needed a vChief?
Capacity. I needed a certain level of expertise and a certain level of ability and experience. The unique thing about vChief was I was able to have someone come from an education reform and non-profit space, so I didn’t have to do the external context building. Both vChiefs understood the external environment I was operating in. That’s really important for a startup because you don’t have a lot of opportunities to make mistakes in that space. vChief’s ability to bring in people that didn’t need that level of context building was incredibly helpful because we were so strapped, and they understood that they were doing work for an organization whose success lies on the success of others’.
 

Chief of Staff Services Profile

Education reform and non-profit experience to match client needs in a start-up environment

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Team process and structure building

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Strategic advisory services to CEO

Team leadership and active involvement in strategy sessions

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"I could always count on Nikki to ask the very practical questions, even if I didn’t always want to answer them. It was an incredible. She was great at strategic thinking and good at thinking through systems. "

What skills does your vChief bring that complement your own skill set?
Both Nikki and Crystal came in with the incredible mindset of “how do I have value” from day 1. Quite honestly, I think there are consultants who come in and wait on you to tell them how to add value, but my vChief consultants were always proactively seeking that out. Nikki, specifically, was an incredibly peaceful, level-headed, very practical person, and that was an important balance to my “visionary founder” personality. I could always count on Nikki to ask the very practical questions, even if I didn’t always want to answer them. It was an incredible. She was great at strategic thinking and good at thinking through systems. I am not necessarily best equipped to do, but she was able to do it so easily.
 

How is your organization in a better place because of your vChief?
You helped facilitate the hiring of a key role and you helped put in place some organizational and cultural elements. For example, they forced me to do biweekly team meetings and to do those in a way that were collaborative and not “okay, what’s the quickest and most efficient way to get this done?” Nikki pushed me to not just do it the quickest way but to do it in a way that built the team and invested people more deeply, which was important because it’s hard to maintain teams.