When the Culture Is the Crisis: Leading a Design Organization Through Founding Transition and Equity Transformation
The organization had a reputation problem, and everyone knew it.
For years, it had been quietly known in design circles as a gatekeeper: an institution that claimed to champion creativity while upholding the very hierarchies and exclusions that kept the field homogenous. White supremacy culture in design doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it lives in who gets platformed, who sits on the board, who gets to define what "excellence" looks like.
When the founder prepared to step away, and the organization faced its first-ever executive director transition, there was a choice: install new leadership into the same broken culture, or use the transition as a catalyst for something different.
They chose transformation. That choice required strategy, courage — and someone willing to facilitate the hard conversations.
"Founding transitions are not just leadership changes. They are cultural reckonings. This one was both."
PROJECT OVERVIEW Organization: Design & Creative Arts Nonprofit
Transition Type: Founder to First Executive Director
Services: Strategic Planning
· Board Development
· Organizational Culture Change · Equity Programming
· Stakeholder Engagement
Outcome: 200% increase in engagement
· Measurably improved public perception
· Restructured board
· New equity-centered programming
Equity Focus: Dismantling gatekeeping and white supremacy culture in the creative sector
The Challenge
Founding transitions are among the most vulnerable moments in an organization's life. Add a legacy of exclusion, a resistant board, and a public watching closely for signs of whether the change is real — and the stakes multiply quickly.
This organization faced all of it at once:
A founder stepping away after years of defining the organization's identity, relationships, and culture
A reputation in the design community for gatekeeping — prioritizing a narrow, predominantly white vision of design excellence
A board that reflected the old culture, including at least one member actively standing in the way of change
A community of designers and creatives — particularly BIPOC designers — who had been excluded, skeptical, and watching
No first executive director yet in place, meaning the strategic planning process itself had to hold the organization steady through uncertainty
The work wasn't just to write a strategic plan. It was to facilitate a cultural reckoning while keeping the organization functional and moving forward.
"You can't install new leadership into an old culture and expect transformation. The culture has to change first — or at the same time."
The Approach
Strategic planning in a moment like this requires more than frameworks and facilitation. It requires naming what others are tiptoeing around, building trust with skeptical stakeholders, and creating the conditions for decisions that feel impossible to make alone.
01 — Honest Assessment of Organizational Culture Before any planning could happen, the organization needed to see itself clearly. Through staff interviews, stakeholder conversations, and community listening sessions, we documented what the design community actually experienced of this organization — not just what leadership believed it was offering. The findings were uncomfortable. They were also necessary.
02 — Facilitating Difficult Board Conversations One board member was a central figure in the organization's gatekeeping culture and was actively resisting the direction the organization needed to go. Rather than working around this dynamic, we named it — directly, carefully, and with the full board present. Through a structured strategic planning process, we created the conditions for that board member to step down with dignity. This wasn't a forced removal. It was a facilitated recognition that the organization's next chapter required different leadership at every level.
03 — Bringing in New Voices and New Partnerships We identified and helped bring in a fiscally sponsored nonprofit representing an expansive, diverse community of designers and creatives — many of whom had been excluded from or skeptical of this organization for years. Their involvement wasn't symbolic. They became genuine partners in shaping the strategic direction, programming priorities, and community relationships of the organization going forward.
04 — Adding Equity Programming That Walked the Talk Reputation change requires action, not just statements. We developed equity-centered programming that reflected the values the organization was now claiming — creating visible, substantive opportunities for designers from historically excluded communities. The goal was to make the organization's commitment to equity legible and real to the people who had every reason to be skeptical of it.
05 — Board Diversification Alongside the strategic plan, we worked to identify and recruit new board members who reflected the communities the organization was now committed to serving. Diversity at the board level wasn't a checkbox — it was a structural accountability measure. New board composition changed who had decision-making power, whose perspective shaped organizational priorities, and what the community saw when they looked at leadership.
The Results
200% increase in community engagement.
The numbers tell part of the story. The design community — particularly designers and creatives who had been excluded or skeptical — showed up. Membership grew. Events filled. The conversation about this organization in design circles shifted from skepticism and critique to cautious, then genuine, enthusiasm.
🏛️ Founding transition completed — the organization successfully moved from founder-led to its first executive director, with clarity of vision, stable governance, and a board equipped to support new leadership.
🚪 Barrier to progress removed — the board member standing in the way of transformation stepped down through a dignified, facilitated process, allowing the organization to move forward with full board alignment.
🤝 New partnership established — a fiscally sponsored nonprofit representing a broad, diverse community of designers and creatives joined as a genuine organizational partner, reshaping relationships with previously excluded communities.
✊ Equity programming launched — new programming that visibly and substantively centered historically excluded designers, making the organization's values legible through action rather than statements.
🎨 Board diversified — new board members reflecting the communities the organization serves, changing who holds decision-making power at the highest level.
📈 200% engagement increase — measurable growth in community participation, membership, and event attendance, alongside a documented shift in public perception across the design field.
"The organization that emerged from this process wasn't a reformed version of the old one. It was genuinely new — with different relationships, different power structures, and a different reputation to build."
Why This Matters: Culture Change Is Organizational Change
Design shapes the world. Who gets to participate in design — who gets funded, platformed, celebrated, and centered — shapes whose world gets designed.
Organizations that claim to champion creativity while upholding gatekeeping and exclusion aren't neutral. They actively reproduce the inequities they could be challenging. And when those organizations have reputations, resources, and influence, the harm compounds.
Founding transitions are a rare opportunity. When a founder steps away, the culture they built is up for renegotiation. The question is whether the organization has the courage to do that work honestly — or whether it installs new leadership into old systems and calls it change.
This organization chose honest work. That meant:
Sitting with difficult findings about how the community experienced them
Naming a board dynamic that everyone felt but no one was saying out loud
Inviting in communities they had historically excluded
Accepting that reputation repair is slow, earned, and visible — not declared
The 200% engagement increase is meaningful. But what it represents is more meaningful still: a community of designers choosing to believe that this time, something was actually different.
What Made This Work
Name what others are avoiding. The organization's gatekeeping culture was an open secret. The moment we named it directly — in the room, with the board, with staff — the work could actually begin. Equity transformation requires someone willing to say what's true.
Use structure to enable hard decisions. The board member who needed to step down didn't leave because someone demanded it. They left because a well-facilitated strategic planning process created the conditions for them to see — and acknowledge — that the organization's direction had changed. A good process creates space for people to do the right thing.
Bring skeptics in, don't market to them. The designers and creatives who had been excluded weren't going to be won back by a rebrand or a statement. They needed to be genuinely involved in shaping what came next. Partnership isn't a PR move — it's a power-sharing decision.
Make equity visible through programming, not promises. Communities that have been excluded are not moved by commitments. They are moved by action. New equity programming gave the community something concrete to point to — something that demonstrated the organization's values rather than just declaring them.
Diversify where it counts: decision-making. Adding diverse voices to advisory roles or event lineups without changing board composition doesn't alter power dynamics. We focused on board-level diversification because that's where organizational direction is actually set.
Understand that reputation repair is relational. The 200% increase in engagement didn't come from a campaign. It came from relationships — with the new partner organization, with designers who were finally seeing themselves in the programming, with a board that now looked like the community it claimed to serve. Reputation is rebuilt person by person, not announcement by announcement.
