MEET MAX
Max?co-founded Rise, a national student organizing nonprofit fighting for free college.
We first met in 2017 when our mutual friend Christian connected us over email. He said?Max?had a “free college idea” and told us to bond over all things launching, growing and leading a national student organizing nonprofit.
Over the past 7 years,?Max?and the incredible team of students and staff at Rise built a juggernaut.
Rise launched and expanded free college programs in California, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Mexico, and has played a critical role in the campaign to cancel student debt for over 40 million Americans. And?RCTs showed?that their GOTV programs increased turnout by 4% points. Badass.
Max?sought out coaching to explore ways to grow spiritually as a leader, to enjoy his role despite the stress, and critically, to assess when and how he wanted to transition from his role as founding CEO.
This spring, nationally renowned activist?Mary-Pat Hector?took over as Rise’s CEO. She formerly built Rise’s Georgia organizing program, and she’s off to an amazing start in her new role.
Max's reflections on our coaching work are below. Click through the GIFs for videos.
If you want to connect with?Max?about founder/ED transitions, youth organizing, affordable housing or sustainable avocado farming, you can reach him?at [email protected].
Alexis
Why were you seeking coaching?
We'd grown enormously in the 2020 election cycle, and in 2021 we were facing this big question around whether we could sustain that growth and impact without the presidential election and the funding that moment unlocks.
I also had this inclination that I was ready to transition out of this CEO role. But I wanted to work with a coach to figure out if that's actually what I wanted, or if I was just tired and needed a break or a different way of working.
My other big question was -- how can I do my work in a way that's not so soul crushing? That's not so alienated from the motivations and values that brought me to this work in the first place? Can a coach help me connect with those things?
Your orientation around spirit and social justice and thinking beyond the X's and O's of execution and leadership really drew me to your coaching practice in particular.
How would you describe this process to a friend?
Transformational.
When you're in the middle of these leadership roles, especially in high-stakes, high-pressure moments, it's incoming on all sides. You’re just in problem solving mode and you get disconnected from yourself.
You helped me figure out who I am, what kind of leader I want to be, and what values I care about.
You challenged me and pushed me consistently to think about and explore topics around spirit and justice that made me a better social entrepreneur and a better organizational leader.
How did coaching support your transition?
I didn't know that leaving Rise was going to be the hardest thing that I did at Rise. I might not have left if I knew that!
You helped me think deeply and explicitly about my needs at this phase of my life and how that relates to what my organization needs in a CEO. I learned about myself and what my intrinsic motivators and drivers are. That made the decision about leaving and stepping aside much clearer.
How could we execute this transition in terms of finding the right person and setting them up for success in the best possible way? So many of the ideas that we had around how to do it, where to look who the right person is, those came from coaching with you.
领英推荐
Why does doing good work sometimes feel…bad?
I spent so many nights like every entrepreneur does wondering, is this gonna die? Is this gonna be over tomorrow? Are we gonna run out of money?
We didn't. We were very successful by all sorts of metrics. On paper, I had accomplished everything that I wanted this journey to be, and yet I still felt bad about it in some ways. That's really complicated.
In order to figure this part out, you have to start asking a different set of questions that have nothing to do with how much did you raise in the last quarter? Or how many voters did you talk to?
What did you learn about yourself spiritually?
I gained a framework for understanding spirituality, and exploring how it connects to my leadership and work.?Looking at spirit & justice shouldn’t be something we do with the leftover 10% of life we aren’t already spending at work or managing life.?
I realized it’s just as dangerous to be a materialist atheist as to be religiously dogmatic.
I was able to disaggregate the valuable aspects of a spiritual experience that I want to maintain in my life that have nothing to do with religion. It gave me a more coherent framework through which to view this searching that I was already doing.
The Saturn Return
How was stepping out of your role spiritual?
I spent my final weeks doing one on ones with all my team with a bent towards appreciating them and the time that we've spent together.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that you're proud of, but that doesn't necessarily touch your spirit or your soul.
I'm proud of the millions of dollars that I raised over five or six years. I'm proud of our impact and our quantifiable impact on elections. I'm proud of policy change. But those are all such big concepts that you don't really connect with them spiritually.
I'll never?meet?all the people who have had their student debt forgiven because of Rise’s work or go to college tuition free in a state where there's a program. But these relationships and connections that I have with our team over the last five years is a way to experience the spirit of this work.
Who’s a good fit for this kind of leadership coaching?
I think people who are far enough along in their journey as a leader that they feel like they've been impactful, but don't feel spiritually nourished or really fulfilled.
And people who are at a career or life transition or inflection moment, who want to think about exploring something new.