NOW is a Welcoming and Empowering Place to Work - Director NOW Employee Review

I feel that I must respond to the very deceptive information that has been posted on this website about working conditions at the National Organization for Women’s National Action Center in Washington, D.C. Because NOW is a political organization there is sometimes a bumpy transition from one slate of elected national leaders to another incoming slate (national officers can only serve two four-year terms). As it happened in 2017, unhappy losing candidates and their young and enthusiastic supporters decided to try to discredit the new leadership. Unfortunately, rather than offer an honest and fact-based evaluation of the work of the new officer slate and staff, they prepared a series of poison pen letters and memos. The critiques were not based on the facts and on an understanding of how the organization is meant to work, as overseen by the national board, and as determined by our administrative manual. NOW is a membership-based organization that influences how we function and how we are judged. A modernization effort to update our bylaws and to streamline the organization was accomplished, recently. There has been some discussion about how the views and interests women of color are included (or not included). Women of color helped to found NOW, have consistently been part of the national officer slate and seats on the national board are designated for women of color. Women of color have been sought for both junior and senior positions in the National Action Center and, currently, more than half of our staff positions are filled by women of color. Over the years, the National Action Office, the national board and many chapters have had numerous trainings designed to enhance racial relations and to be become more aware of the barriers that women of color encounter. I can say after many years of experience that the National Organization for Women is a very welcoming, empowering, and even inspiring place to work. We enjoy an atmosphere where everyone is treated as an equal, where we learn from each other and where new ideas and new ways of doing things are considered, with many adopted. One way to gauge the organization’s functioning is to read the evaluations prepare over several decades by what is now hundreds of interns: their assessments are overwhelmingly favorable. As a national organization with a diverse membership, many with strong opinions and their own agendas, it can be a challenge to sustain broad support from our more than 300 chapters and hundreds of thousands of members and contributing supporters. But NOW has managed to do that and much more for the past 52 years. Our current leadership is tackling many challenges and is taking the organization in the right direction.