This episode of the ACB Advocacy Update was hijacked by ACB Executive Director Eric Bridges for a conversation with Lee Nasehi, President & CEO of VisionServe Alliance. Lee shared her personal connection to vision loss, the membership and mission of the VisionServe Alliance, and her experience in the first year of being at the helm of a membership organization.
More information about the VisionServe Alliance is available online at www.visionservealliance.org.
Transcript:
Intro:
You're listening to the ACB Advocacy Update
Eric Bridges:
And hello. Welcome to the ACB Advocacy Update for the week of May 11th. I am not Clark Rachfal or Claire Stanley. I'm Eric Bridges, the executive director of the American Council of the Blind. I have taken over this podcast. Clark and Claire are locked away in a closet in the national office. They will be let out at the end of this podcast. At any rate, it is my pleasure to welcome a special guest for this week's edition. Lee Nasehi, who is the CEO of Vision Serve Alliance. Welcome Lee!
Lee Nasehi:
Thank you very much, Eric. Happy to be here.
Eric Bridges:
Yeah. And turn about is fair play. She had me on the Vision Serve Alliance podcast, what about a month ago or so? During this time of a shelter in place all of these weeks seem to kind of blur into one. But, but thank you very much. And why don't we, why don't we get into it here a little bit?
Lee Nasehi:
Okay, let's do it.
Eric Bridges:
Over the last year or so, ACB has gotten involved with Vision Serve Alliance. And in fact, we are now a proud member. Actually got my notice to re-up our membership just this week.
Lee Nasehi:
Wow. Time flies, huh?
Eric Bridges:
It does. You know, I met you, I believe in February last year before the Vision Serve conference in in Nashville in May. And you, you were, I think just getting ready to start your new gig with Vision Serve Alliance. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about Vision Serve Alliance and what you all do and the role you play in the community.
Lee Nasehi:
Great, thanks. Well, Vision Serve Alliance is a leadership collective, the leaders of all nonprofit and charitable organizations that are committed to serving people with blindness, low vision and other visual impairment as well as our allies and related fields are encouraged to join Vision Serve Alliance. Together we are shaping the impact of our, our national communities work. So Vision Serve Alliance's, purpose is to strengthen, empower, renew, and perhaps most importantly, connect the leadership of all these organizations through collaboration rather than competition in order to dramatically enhance our collective impact on the quality of life for people of all ages, living with blindness and low vision and other visual impairment.
Eric Bridges:
Awesome. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the various sort of sub sectors or what have you in our community, the, you know, the agencies for the blind or other places, other organizations that are members?
Lee Nasehi:
Yeah, sure. So we have a little over 120 members and we're hoping to grow to 200 members. Our members include national organizations like ACB, AFB, the American Printing House. So many, almost all the national organizations are members of Vision Serve Alliance, probably the largest group or type of member are those community based organizations providing vision rehabilitation services. Also Ability One affiliated organizations are members private schools for the blind like the New York Special Institute and Overbrook. Many of the dog guide schools for the blind are members of Vision Serve Alliance. We have organizations that are dedicated to early intervention and preschool services or the other end of the spectrum, seniors, low vision clinics. So any, any organization that is providing you know, that their mission is primarily about service to people who are blind and visually impaired are welcome and are part of this. We also have associate members too, that's a relatively new thing and we're, we're hoping to have many more associates. Those could be people who work for an organization that doesn't fit our definition, but they're very involved and passionate about the field. They could be retired and, and still working in the field, you know, still want to be involved. So we're hoping to grow that number as well.
Eric Bridges:
Wow. That's quite a breadth of, you know, areas of expertise and, you know, service provision. What's it been like for you to take over a membership organization you know, over the last year and dealing with these various organizations and their leadership?
Lee Nasehi:
Well, it has been very interesting. I'd say the most challenging aspect of managing Vision Serve Alliance for me has been the size of our staff. I don't know if everybody realizes this, but we only have at the moment two full time staff, including me. And we have one part time staff now that part time staff will become full time next month. So that will help. And then we recently added Paul Schroeder to our team as contracted public policy staff. So that's a big help. But it's still not enough for us to do the many things that our board and staff leadership team has envisioned for our five year target date of December 31st, 2024. There's a whole lot we want to accomplish. And you know, our vision is much bigger than our staff capacity. So and for me, because before I ran a much larger organization, I still have the same amount of dreams and things I'm pursuing us. And it's like, wait, I don't have anybody to delegate that to.
Eric Bridges:
Kind of throttle the expectation a little bit I guess. You know, that's one of the really interesting components of my role at ACB down through the years, five years ago when I was appointed executive director, we had a pretty skeletal team and we had gone through a year or two of actual contraction where we actually had to let people go, and getting back on solid financial footing and then putting together a plan for how to, you know, be able to strategically add head count. That's something that was really helpful for us. And it sounds like it's, it's obviously very helpful for you and I don't mean throttle expectations as in lower expectations, but there's, there's where you want to be in there is where you are at the current moment and how do you, how do you, how do you deal with that? And those are things I've had to deal with.
Lee Nasehi:
Absolutely, and sometimes you do have to prune so that you can grow down the road. And I think many of us are experiencing that right now through this pandemic. So yeah, it's a challenge. An additional challenge of running an association. Anybody who runs an association is managing the sometimes, especially and you've heard how diverse our field or our membership is. So managing those sometimes very diverse needs and priorities of our members with what I'll call true North. Those big hairy audacious goals and plans that are combined board and staff leadership team have, have put in place what, where we believe we need to go. It doesn't always align with the immediate needs of our membership. So we have to balance that. And that's what happens in association management. I'm learning that. And then I guess finally, you know, hello, we're in a pandemic. So one of our primary strategies of Vision Serve, like most associations is convening people. We do that to further collaboration and so many of the things that we want to accomplish, our meetings, it's all about convening people. So that's obviously a lot harder right now because of the pandemic. And also the pandemic is draining members, resources and energy and we depend on dues and donations and volunteer service to accomplish our goals and objectives. So the next few years are going to be interesting, but you know, we are, we are not giving up. We are bolstered by the enthusiasm of our members in spite of the pandemic. And I'll say our engagement at Vision Serve has never been higher quite frankly.
Eric Bridges:
What had you done previous to joining Vision Serve? You know, were you in the blindness field before you came to Vision Serve?
Lee Nasehi:
Oh yeah. Yes. So prior to Vision Serve, I was the president and CEO of Lighthouse Central Florida and it, and it subsidiary Lighthouse Works. I actually started working at that organization at the end of 1998 as a part time grant writer. I was familiar with the organization. And I'll tell you about that later, but I was familiar, started working there. The, then executive director said, Oh come just work for us part time. It'll be fun. We'll have lunch. And I wasn't there very long and realized, yikes, there was some work to be done because it was a very small and struggling organization. And so after some soul searching on the part of the board, they decided to make a leadership change. And on Valentine's day 2000 the board offered me the position of interim executive director as they conducted a national search for the next regular leader. I really didn't have any intention of doing that ongoing. I had never been a chief executive before and I had four children. The youngest of which at that point was two years old. We had, we had just moved to back to Florida. There was a lot going on in my life. But in the end they did offer me the position and I was nervous. There was so much I didn't know how to do, but I felt like it was my destiny. I know it sounds a little strange, but I just was compelled to do this even though I really didn't know how to do the job. I wanted to. I felt like I needed to. So I took the job and I knew I had a lot to learn. I made a lot of mistakes over the first few years especially.
Eric Bridges:
I'm familiar with those! [laughter]
Lee Nasehi:
Still do! But somebody suggested I join what is now Vision Service Alliance. So it had a real long name, different name back then. And I wasn't sure that as an organization we could afford to join Vision Serve, but I had a visionary board chair at the time and when I spoke to him about this without hesitation, he said, you really need to join us. This is going to help you grow professionally and learn more about the field. And boy, it was just one of the best decisions we ever made. So I've been a member of Vision Serve for 20 years and even served on the board of Vision Serve Alliance as I was still working at a Lighthouse Central Florida. Got so many great ideas, tools, resources. Found some professional mentors and ultimately lifelong friends. I mean, I consider my professional community to be these people that I met through Vision Serve Alliance. So anyway when I started at Lighthouse Central Florida in 1998, we had an annual operating budget of less than a million dollars. We had about 25 employees, most of whom were working on a part time basis. And we only served about a hundred visually impaired people a year. You know, their families were involved too, but only about a hundred, maybe 150 visually impaired people a year. And when I departed last year we had added the subsidiary corporation Lighthouse Works. We had about 120 full time employees, including many people who are blind and visually impaired, professionally certified, degrade, experienced a terrific leadership team, two boards and a combined annual budget of about $10 million. Maybe a little bit more than that. And and Eric, I'm even happier to report that Lighthouse has continued to grow following my departure and is flourishing in spite of the pandemic. Now I've seen a lot of people not just in our field, but leaders leave their nonprofits and unfortunately they fall apart after they go. And boy, that is, I was not going to let that happen. So the few years before I left, we went through a lot at Lighthouse to really instill or implement an entrepreneurial operating system and build a leadership team. Now that organization is built to last now.
Eric Bridges:
So talk to me for a second about the entrepreneurial operating system. What is that and how is it, you know, what helped, how did that help your organization?
Lee Nasehi:
Yeah, so the entrepreneurial operate entrepreneurial operating system is a system that was developed by Gino Wickman. And if you've read the book Traction by Gino Wickman, that's what we're talking about. Yeah. And we read the book. I'll say I read the book with a few members at Lighthouse about five years ago and it was at a time when Lighthouse was struggling a little bit again because we had launched Lighthouse Works, which made our organization very more complicated than it was before. We had big dreams, but we weren't quite sure how to get from point A to point B. And I'm, I knew enough as a leader at that point that what got, what we had that got us to that point wasn't enough to get us to the next point. And so fortunately someone suggested traction. We read it, we decided we were going to implement it. And again, another visionary board chair who saw immediately the advantage of us doing this, a very successful entrepreneur himself. He encouraged us to hire an implementer to take us through this, not self implement, not that you can't self implement, but there's, there were many potential distractions from us following through with it. So he encouraged us to do that. And it was a lot of work the first two years. I'm not going lie, it was, it changed our culture. It forced us to be more honest with each other. Transparency, accountability in a good way, but still accountability is work. It enhanced tremendously employee engagement throughout the organization. The board was involved. They understand and support the system as much as the staff. And ultimately it did what the system was built to do, give us traction so that we, we had a vision that everyone understands and we all started rowing in the same direction and started to gain traction rather than chasing after that shiny object. I'm getting tired of, of pursuing one avenue and letting it go. We had a five year plan and we were all marching towards it. Hey, it still gives you the opportunity to change gears. I, as an example, have implemented Vision Server Alliance at I'm sorry, EOS at Vision Serve Alliance and we have a five year plan. We have a roadmap, but this situation in which we're living is going to require us to step back and alter some of those tactics and specific numbers in that. But the roadmap is still good.
Eric Bridges:
That's great. And the chasing of shiny objects is a, it's an exercise at times in futility. And it's, it's, it's one that in membership organizations is a particular ongoing real challenge. And you know, what's, what's been good is over the last year, the leadership team of ACB has actually read the book Traction that Lee was referring to. And we are actually in the process of the early stages of of implementing EOS within ACB. And a lot of this started last year when we reorganized our, in our organization to be more programmatic focused clumping a lot of our committees into the different programmatic areas where they, where they operate and have begun to see some good results with that, with our nine key programs.
Eric Bridges:
But in addition to that, there's the need for some more structure and, and the development of some processes to ensure that we're, we're moving in the right direction and that we're doing it going about things the right way. And so it's a little different for us as a, as a national membership organization of folks that are blind. Some of this is quite new not just to ACB. The team, but also will some new concepts for our the leadership and our membership as we move forward. But it's you know, it's the right time for us to do this. And you know, our expectation is to grow, is to be, you know, a real power in the blindness community. I believe we already are, but I believe that there's, there's more yet for ACB accomplish, and this is a good way.
Lee Nasehi:
Oh yeah. Well I'm so excited you're doing it, Eric. I, gosh, just hats off to you all for, for, for taking this step and a very bold step. You know, when, when we went through EOS at Lighthouse, we were one of the few nonprofits who were doing this. And initially when I read the book that was the only hesitation I had is it, it really, I mean, it was built, it was written around the idea of concept of a for-profit company. Now the size of the company, Gino Wickman said didn't matter. It worked as well for small companies as it has for the Ford Corporation. But I'm here to say that it also works for non-profits and for associations. And ACB is probably one of the most complex organizations that will ever go through EOS and you're going to do it. And if ACB can do it, anybody can do it.
Eric Bridges:
[Laughter] That's encouraging to hear. Oh boy. Well, hey, why don't we move on with some some fun stuff here? Get to know Lee a little bit. The other side of Lee. What do you like to do when you're not working?
Lee Nasehi:
I used to have hobbies and the last 20 years of my life I let go of those. But you know, I'm actually, I've dug out my cross stitch. I used to cross stitch avidly and I write poetry and I actually have converted some of those poems into cross stitch work. So I've dragged it out and I'm starting to look at it again. Yeah.
Eric Bridges:
That's pretty cool, okay. So what, what have you learned about yourself the last, we've been doing this now for 12 years, right? This shelter in place, it feels like.
Lee Nasehi:
[Laughter] Has it been that long?!
Eric Bridges:
I don't know, basically what coming up on two months, I believe, right. Within the next week, so seven, eight weeks. And I've learned a lot of things about myself. I can be really very annoying to everyone in my household, including my four month old will get annoyed with me. I can, I don't know what the deal is with me, but I can just turn off my five year old son Tyler, my wife, who's trying to work full time as well. And then even annoying myself. Just these goofy little things. And I think a lot of it has to do with just being cooped up in the house. Are there some things that you've learned about you, yourself, your spouse over the last, you know, seven eight weeks that you didn't necessarily know or thought you weren't doing that, but you were, you know, those sorts of things?
Lee Nasehi:
Well, I'm not going to tell you everything, but... [Laughter]
Eric Bridges:
Give me your deepest, darkest. Yeah. Inadequacies.
Lee Nasehi:
Well, the first thing I've realized is I have way too many shoes.
Eric Bridges:
[Laughter]
Lee Nasehi:
Mostly ones that are uncomfortable. And since I don't travel anymore, I have been living in the pair of Sketchers that I bought during our Atlanta conference in November because they're super comfortable and I'm like, why do I have all these other shoes? So that's one thing that I've learned. And I don't know that this is new, but it's an extreme affirmation of the fact that I am indeed an extrovert and I like to be with people in person and I'm a planner. And so it's really tough to plan in this cavernous ambiguity of COVID-19 personally and professionally. I realized, wow, I loved planning those family gatherings, those trips. The, God forbid those conferences. [Laughter].
Eric Bridges:
Yes.
Lee Nasehi:
Yeah, it's a little tough to do that. So I miss those things, but I also thank goodness my husband and I actually like each other and we love where we live in our neighborhood. We have a pool, we swim a lot. And you know, who loves this the most out of the whole family? This new normal is our dog, Olivia.
Eric Bridges:
Oh yeah. 24-7 attention I would imagine.
Lee Nasehi:
Yeah, lots more walks. She swims with us. So yeah, all in all I have nothing to complain about. I I'm very grateful.
Eric Bridges:
Well, that's good. I'm also very grateful. You know, everybody in our houses is healthy and happy and that's really what matters. One of the things I learned about myself is, you know, you take these a personality inventories like Myers-Briggs and I've always sort of teetered right in the middle between an introvert and an extrovert. And I miss being around other people. I miss going into the office and being around my team. And I miss, I was sharing with you before we started this podcast. I actually went to the dentist this morning and had a really great experience, which is totally bizarre. I got to hang out and talk to a hygienist for, you know, 45 minutes, which is hard to talk with hygienists because they generally have something in your mouth at all times. But, you know, human interaction outside of just your family. I enjoyed it, you know, and who enjoys going to the dentist, nobody does, but you know, it sort of hit home with me on the way home, you know, that wow. You know a lot of things that you, you don't take into consideration or you, you take for granted and then when they're gone it's like, jeez, you know.
Lee Nasehi:
Oh, I know. I'm right there with you Eric.
Eric Bridges:
Yeah. Well right on. Well, any last any last words before we end this bad boy.
Lee Nasehi:
Hmm. Let's see. Well I want to thank ACB and your many members for the fantastic work that you have done on behalf of our, our mutually beloved national community of people who are blind and visually impaired and have low vision and other, other things going on. I didn't mention before, but my introduction to this community is actually through our son. So we have a 39 year old son who was born extremely premature. And as a result, is blind, has cerebral palsy and is cognitively impaired. And were it not for Joe, I don't know that I would know any of you and it's it's really strange to think about that. But my love for Joe and a pursuit of understanding and providing the best quality of life for him led me to meeting so many other people. I just have tremendous respect and admiration for and consider my friends now. And so you never know where life is going to take you, but I think I'm exactly where I belong and I am looking forward to working with ACB and the many other partners in our community for many years to come
Eric Bridges:
Amen. It's been great getting to know you over the last year and working with you pretty closely on a couple of different initiatives and you are exactly where you need to pick up. That is absolutely the case. We're big fans of Vision Serve and even even bigger fans of Lee. So thanks so much for joining us this week.
Lee Nasehi:
My pleasure. Thanks, Eric.
Eric Bridges:
Absolutely. And as always Clark and Claire remind us each week that if you have an advocacy issue that you want ACB to handle or to speak to somebody within ACB, please email us at [email protected], that's [email protected]. Obviously, to learn more about the American Council of the Blind, please visit acb.org and as Clark and Claire always say, keep advocating.