Pros
We had a diverse staff. The mission is worthwhile. The students inspire.
Cons
Every single decision, no matter how small, was made by the CEO (a white man). This created bottlenecks, delays, and adversely affect the quality of our work. Our record keeping and data was in shambles, and processes nonexistent; efforts to improve anything were met with resistance, lethargy, or subterfuge. There was little to no transparency, even at the directors level, around our precarious financial position, changes to policies that adversely affected employees, or around staff resignations/terminations. There was little to no strategy to any of our work; everything was at the direction of the CEO; the lack of process and direction seemed intentional, because it meant that everyone had to go to him for the final say. He had a talent for delegating the internal damage control to other members of the C-suite (despite the fact that he was the party causing the chaos), who seemed more than willing to carry out that task. Their complicity made an already challenging situation simply untenable. There was no commitment to equity and inclusion; we had a BIPOC vendor policy that existed on paper, but our some of our largest contracts went to white people, because the CEO was the final decision maker on those, too. Things got to a point where I was having to decide between maintaining my professional integrity and carrying out the wishes of the CEO. This place did a number of my mental health and the mental health of many colleagues on my team. If you have any moral or ethical compass, or wish to have a job where you clock in and clock out with your dignity intact, this is not a place for you. If you are up for getting gaslit, being put in professionally compromising situations, and enjoy showing up to work knowing there will be some bizarre plot twist to a work product thanks to a CEO who has zero professional experience in your field needing to tinker with it, jump right in.