By Mind Share Partners
After seven remarkable years since launching Mind Share Partners, I’m stepping down as CEO at the end of 2023. That said, my commitment to workplace mental health remains unwavering. It has been enormously gratifying to help ignite this movement. We’ve come so far from when mental health challenges were taboo to discuss at work and creating mentally healthy cultures wasn’t a priority–the momentum for this issue has now become mainstream.
I could never have imagined that Mind Share Partners and the movement as a whole would have achieved so much in such a short time–I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished. First off, I would never have dreamed that I’d now casually discuss my experiences with anxiety and depression, after having carefully kept them hidden for so long. I certainly wouldn’t have predicted Mind Share’s recent C-suite personal storytelling campaign, Leaders Go First.
On the advocacy side, we’ve also pioneered landmark research on workplace mental health. We collaborate with partners including the Office of the Surgeon General, regularly contribute to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, including authoring three chapters in a first-of-its-kind book, the HBR Guide to Better Mental Health at Work, and have garnered press in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Fast Company, and others. In 2017, there were barely any mental health employee resource groups (ERGs) in existence. Now, we have almost 500 companies represented in Mind Share Partners’ free community for ERG leaders.
On our client services side, Mind Share provides custom workplace training, strategic advising, and implementation to industry leaders such as BlackRock, Morrison Foerster, and Pinterest. We no longer have to convince companies why workplace mental health matters like when we first started; they now seek us out and ask what they should do.
We’re at an inflection point in the workplace mental health space and are also moving into the next phase of Mind Share’s growth, for which I’m more hopeful than ever. Now is the right time for a new leader to help create a vision 2.0, building upon the incredible track record that we’ve created.
Personally, the last few years have brought their fair share of challenges, including leading and parenting through a global pandemic, a racial reckoning, a surge in mental health as an issue area, and other curveballs. The weight and responsibilities of being a founder, along with the added expectations of a female CEO needing to care for her team compounded this. Simultaneously, I had to navigate the unexpected loss of my dad and the sandwich generation demands of caring for my two young kids while also helping my mom.
All of this together has ultimately led to my own personal and professional burnout. I have also become more aware of what I most value and enjoy. I acknowledge the irony in being the leader of a workplace mental health nonprofit and stepping down due to burnout. Upon reflection, I don’t think that I–or we as an organization–have done anything wrong, but that society needs to change the structural issues that can often make top jobs unsustainable.
It’s now time for me to practice what we preach by rejuvenating and passing the baton to a new leader. This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s what’s best for me as well as for the organization. The next seven years will also be a very different job. My future role as Founder and Board member will allow me to focus on what brings me the most joy–being an ambassador for Mind Share and the movement and having more time for my family, friends, and myself.
Founding and leading Mind Share Partners has been a tremendous honor and privilege. Thanks to our phenomenal team and Board, it’s set up to be successful far beyond one person or leader. I could never express my full gratitude to the many others who’ve supported both Mind Share and me over the years–including my family, friends, former nanny, therapist, psychiatrist, clients, funders, partners, and other champions.
Please join me at this exciting crossroads in helping to find a new CEO to lead Mind Share Partners and the workplace mental health movement to even greater heights!
With so much gratitude,
Message from Board Chair, Jill Miller
When I met Kelly 18 years ago in business school at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, she immediately stood out as an authentic and values-driven leader who would make waves in driving social impact. Through Mind Share Partners, she has done exactly that – in building, shaping, and growing a movement for workplace mental health.
Kelly courageously launched Mind Share Partners at just the right moment and without the foresight of a looming pandemic that would illuminate and amplify the mental health tolls so many of us carry. Kelly’s visionary leadership, cross-sector savvy, vulnerability, and authenticity have paved the way to normalize mental health at work, for leaders and employees to share their stories, and to open the gates for companies to prioritize mentally healthy cultures. She has become a thought leader in mental health at work, built an organization that has served more than 100 corporate clients, and has raised over $6 million. Mind Share has influenced leaders and developed insights that have shaped a more mentally healthy standard for workplace culture. In many ways, Kelly and her team have already achieved her original vision.
While there is never a good time for such an extraordinary leader to step away, the Mind Share Board and I fully support Kelly in her decision and to prioritize joy, authenticity and her own mental health. She has led with remarkable vision, grit, and tenacity over the course of a very trying few years for the world, the country, and her personally.
Please join me in expressing my deepest appreciation for Kelly’s leadership, all that she has accomplished during the past seven years, and her courage to raise the standard for workplace cultures as well as prioritizing joy and mental health as a leader.
The timing of Kelly’s transition at the end of 2023 coincides with an opportune moment for a new leader to embrace the next stage of Mind Share Partners as CEO. Mind Share has become the leading nonprofit that focuses on workplace mental health. The organization is in a strong position to continue as a movement builder and provide clients with innovative consulting services. We are incredibly grateful that Kelly has also agreed to continue her impact as a Board member and continued champion for Mind Share Partners and the movement.
The Board has partnered with national executive search firm NPAG to assist in leading the search for our next CEO. You can find the CEO job description here. Please spread the word within your networks.
