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The Nonprofit CEO Podcast

by Adam Jeske

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Latest episodes

035 What Do I Keep? What Do I Change? | Church World Service President & CEO Rick Santos

October 20, 2026 · 50 min

When Rick Santos became CEO of Church World Service, it was a homecoming. He had spent his first 13 years in international development there, left for more than a decade, and returned to succeed the leader he had once worked for. That…
034 Am I Even Supposed to Be the CEO? | YouVersion Founder & CEO Bobby Gruenewald

October 13, 2026 · 43 min

In 2021, YouVersion’s Bible App passed half a billion devices. The team celebrated. Bobby Gruenewald knew growth was barely above flat, and the milestone “felt very hollow.” He decided that if he wasn’t going to steward it well, someone…
033 Can I Tell the Board I'm Drowning? | Community Food Club Executive Director AJ Fossel

October 6, 2026 · 35 min

In six months, the Community Food Club grew by 47 percent. AJ Fossel had six people on staff. She was stocking onions in the back because there was nobody else. A trusted teammate told her she was going to leave. AJ sat in her office after…
032 RIF or Resign? | Thompson Child and Family Focus President & CEO Will Jones

September 29, 2026 · 44 min

Three days into his tenure, Will Jones was asked to sign a letter moving $150,000 from Thompson's endowment to cover a $200,000 payroll. Two weeks later, the same letter was back on his desk. Thompson was spending about $5 million a year…
031 Am I Supposed to Decide This? | M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust CEO Romanita Hairston

September 22, 2026 · 42 min

The hard calls, the ones that are 51/49, are supposed to land on the CEO's desk. Romanita Hairston warns that without a clear escalation framework, you'll be doing the wrong work. "You can be making 51/49 decisions, but not the most…

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030 Is This Mission Drift? | FCA President & CEO Shane Williamson

September 15, 2026 · 32 min

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes had worked the same way with high school and college athletes since 1954. Then someone asked a question in a leadership meeting that nobody could answer well, and it started a decade of change. Shane…
029 What Am I Even Doing Here? | Prison Fellowship President & CEO Heather Rice-Minus

September 8, 2026 · 42 min

Heather Rice-Minus walked out of a board meeting without an important approval. She had presented a new mission and vision for Prison Fellowship, built over a year of listening in prisons and long work with her leadership team. The…
028 Teach Me to Care and Not to Care | Biola University President Barry Corey

September 1, 2026 · 37 min

Barry Corey is starting his twentieth year as president of Biola University. He says he is on his third presidency at the same institution. Early on, he hired a senior leader he liked and respected. Years later the university had moved and…
027 Weather the Storm? Or Walk Away? | Growing Hope Globally President & CEO Kaitlyn Slate

August 25, 2026 · 37 min

Kaitlyn Slate stepped into her first CEO role knowing she was very different from her predecessor. The board wanted her to diversify revenue. The staff wanted her to understand who they were. And the farmers who had anchored the…
026 Do We Pull the Plug on a 50-Year Program? | Jews for Jesus CEO Aaron Abramson

August 18, 2026 · 33 min

Jews for Jesus had been sending staff to present to churches for 50 years, more than 1000/year. Pastors invited them in. Churches put them on the schedule. People started to give. Then the invitations started declining, and the costs kept…
025 He Got a $60 Million Gift. Then He Left | Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono

August 11, 2026 · 32 min

He got the largest gift in his organization's history. Then he left anyway. Nick Grono had been employee number one at the Freedom Fund since 2014, the only leader the anti-slavery organization had ever known, and he had already decided to…
024 Treating Complaints as Gifts | World Renew Executive Director Carol Bremer-Bennett

August 4, 2026 · 36 min

Carol Bremer-Bennett sensed there were meetings before the meeting and meetings after the meeting. The initiatives she was pushing kept stalling, and she couldn't get people to say what they really thought. So about halfway through her…

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About the show

Nonprofit CEOs carry decisions they can't fully discuss with their board, their team, or their peers. So they carry them alone. Each week, Adam Jeske, The Nonprofit CEO Advisor, sits down with a nonprofit CEO to go inside the decisions they carry: the agonizing restructure, the wonky board dynamic, the moment that defined their tenure. Adam has been in over 230 of these conversations. The patterns are striking and valuable. This podcast surfaces them so you can lead with the perspective most CEOs never get. For weekly patterns, synthesis, and peer intelligence between episodes, subscribe to The Nonprofit CEO Briefing at nonprofitCEO.com.