Dr. Yasmene Mumby
Principal, The Ringgold
I advise purpose-driven organizations and coach the leaders who run them to thrive. My coaching practice attracts primarily mid-level and rising senior-level leaders who need someone on their side of the ring to jump into catalytic inquiry, problem-solving, and strategic action to navigate and shatter glass ceilings and cliffs.
Don’t rely on outworking yourself and others. Make sure your work is also known so people have to recognize and appreciate your contributions.
My career defining moments that have shaped me as a colleague and leader have all stemmed from someone who saw more in me than I saw in myself at the time. These sponsors believed in me enough to not only share what they saw with me but also introduce me to key leaders who could support me in going to the next level. I am grateful for each and every one of these sponsors who showed up at different inflection points in my career trajectory. They were not afraid to say my name in rooms of opportunity. I learned from them what it means to truly be a colleague and sponsor others in their early career, too.
It is incredibly saddening and frustrating to hear people assert that parity and merit are diametrically opposed. Working towards parity within the workplace does not mean that standards are lowered or not merit-based or that people do not have to earn their role. This is a fatal assumption and one of the biggest challenges today to achieve parity.
The second challenge is the underlying assumption that parity only benefits a select group of people who have been historically mistreated, marginalized, discriminated against. Studies show that parity creates a more productive, thriving, and collaborative workplace for everyone.
Is this sustainable? I ask that question of myself, the teams I lead, and the colleagues who rely on us to get the job done. Too often, because we prove that we can pull off high-quality work in record time, folks come to expect that we will drop our priorities and pick up theirs. Early in my career, I relied on delivering at an unsustainable pace as a way to demonstrate competence and reliability to my colleagues. While this worked at work, it was detrimental to my health and wellbeing at home. I vowed to do better once I earned my way into leadership with people relying on me to have their back and shield them from being assigned work at an unsustainable pace.
I have a beautiful, curious, wide-eyed, dimpled two year old. I look forward to our slow Saturday afternoons, going for walks through the arboretum, coming home to cuddle on the couch, and reading “Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site” before bed. I also have a book in me about motherhood and ambition. In the first few weeks after giving birth, I wrote this piece in Fast Company. I am ready to write more.
Power flows through relationships. If you want to drive change within your existing organization’s culture, you have to focus on where the power gravitates and build with the people who have it.
Dr. Yasmene Mumby is a writer, keynote speaker, and leadership advisor with close to 20 years of pressure-tested, multi-sector experience in international humanitarian aid, education R&D, PreK-12 education, and community organizing.
Purpose-driven teams invite Dr. Mumby and her firm, The Ringgold, to consult and collaborate on their mission-critical organizational ambitions. Yasmene combines her background in academia and wellness to coach a select number of ambitious high-level executives, leaders, and business owners to move away from burn out and exhaustion towards sustainable leadership for themselves and the teams they lead.
Her commentary on leadership and wellbeing have appeared in Fortune, Fast Company, Essence, Black Enterprise, CNBC, Entrepreneur, Yahoo Finance, and Therapy for Black Girls. She’s worked with the most impactful organizations in the world including, the ACLU, The International Rescue Committee, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, National Audubon Society, Faith in Action, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Bread for the World, and Working Families Party.
Yasmene began her career as a middle school teacher turned community organizer and drove organizing and advocacy victories with over 3,000 parent, teacher, and student leaders, from securing filtered lead-free water for students to organizing teachers in an unprecedented contract negotiation to stopping $150 million in operational budget cuts to securing up to $1 billion to rebuild schools.
Yasmene earned her BA in International Studies and MA from Johns Hopkins University, a JD from University of Maryland School of Law and a Doctorate from Harvard University.
Dr. Yasmene Mumby is a writer, keynote speaker, and leadership advisor with close to 20 years of pressure-tested, multi-sector experience in international humanitarian aid, education R&D, PreK-12 education, and community organizing.
