Staff Leadership, Retention & Difficult Conversations
Details
About the event
Many rural New Mexico nonprofits operate without dedicated human resources staff or formal HR expertise. This session offers executive directors a supportive space for peer conversation and practical learning around people management in resource-constrained environments. This event is free; registration is required.
Additional Information
Event details
Rural New Mexico nonprofits often face unique people management challenges, including limited access to HR expertise, tight budgets, and small teams where executive directors are responsible for most personnel decisions. This session creates space for executive directors to share experiences and explore practical approaches to supporting staff while maintaining accountability and organizational health.
Conversation topics will include:
- Staff retention in low-wage environments
- Coaching and feedback conversations
- Performance accountability and clarity
- Building resilient, mission-aligned teams
This session is presented through the Santa Fe Community Foundation’s Learning Hub and is part of the Executive Director Learning Circle program.
About the Learning Hub
The Santa Fe Community Foundation proudly offers our Learning Hub as an educational space for nonprofit board, executive directors, staff members, and donors. Each year, the Hub offers dozens of events, workshops, and learning circles that promote leadership, skill building, and peer-supported growth.
Meet the people leading the conversation
Marsie Silvestro
Marsie Silvestro
Marsie Silvestro brings four decades of expertise to her roles as an intuitive and dynamic Executive Director, Board and Staff Trainer, Group Retreat Facilitator and Mentor. Her leadership experience spans work on both the local and national levels. She is proficient in the Appreciative Inquiry Strategic Model which focuses on identifying an organization's strengths through individual and group interviewing progresses that honors what has been done, creates transformative collective dreaming and creating effective solution based and accomplishable work plans that will move an agency toward growth and a new pathways toward a successful mission.
Marsie believes that no matter what someone’s position is in an agency or the community, all are needed to steer towards a future that elevates the voices and needs of those they serve, as well as ensures that staff and board members feel heard, listened to, included, and appreciated as a thread in the web of service and safety.
Sarah Silva
Sarah Silva
Sarah is a Chicana with Mexican, Spanish, and Indigenous roots, born in Las Cruces and raised in Vado, New Mexico. A graduate of Gadsden High School, she comes from a family of farmers and mechanics. After graduating at the top of her class, Sarah moved to San Francisco, California, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Theology and Latin American History from the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution.
While living in El Salvador, Sarah learned community organizing from Catholic nuns—an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to social justice. After six years of community organizing in San Francisco, she returned to Las Cruces and, in 2009, founded a nonprofit focused on grassroots organizing.
Sarah is a community organizer, former executive director, and certified coach for people working in social movements. She is the parent of two teenagers and the partner of someone living with a chronic illness. In her personal life, she enjoys hiking, cooking, and learning new things.
She identifies proudly as both Chicana and New Mexican and is intentional about creating brave, accountable spaces. Sarah is unapologetic in her belief in the power of vulnerability, an understanding of power dynamics, and consistent practice as pathways to lasting change. Open-minded and curious, she encourages clients to examine their behaviors and mindsets in order to explore new possibilities and choices.
Meet the people leading the conversation
Marsie Silvestro
Marsie Silvestro
Marsie Silvestro brings four decades of expertise to her roles as an intuitive and dynamic Executive Director, Board and Staff Trainer, Group Retreat Facilitator and Mentor. Her leadership experience spans work on both the local and national levels. She is proficient in the Appreciative Inquiry Strategic Model which focuses on identifying an organization's strengths through individual and group interviewing progresses that honors what has been done, creates transformative collective dreaming and creating effective solution based and accomplishable work plans that will move an agency toward growth and a new pathways toward a successful mission.
Marsie believes that no matter what someone’s position is in an agency or the community, all are needed to steer towards a future that elevates the voices and needs of those they serve, as well as ensures that staff and board members feel heard, listened to, included, and appreciated as a thread in the web of service and safety.
Sarah Silva
Sarah Silva
Sarah is a Chicana with Mexican, Spanish, and Indigenous roots, born in Las Cruces and raised in Vado, New Mexico. A graduate of Gadsden High School, she comes from a family of farmers and mechanics. After graduating at the top of her class, Sarah moved to San Francisco, California, where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Theology and Latin American History from the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution.
While living in El Salvador, Sarah learned community organizing from Catholic nuns—an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to social justice. After six years of community organizing in San Francisco, she returned to Las Cruces and, in 2009, founded a nonprofit focused on grassroots organizing.
Sarah is a community organizer, former executive director, and certified coach for people working in social movements. She is the parent of two teenagers and the partner of someone living with a chronic illness. In her personal life, she enjoys hiking, cooking, and learning new things.
She identifies proudly as both Chicana and New Mexican and is intentional about creating brave, accountable spaces. Sarah is unapologetic in her belief in the power of vulnerability, an understanding of power dynamics, and consistent practice as pathways to lasting change. Open-minded and curious, she encourages clients to examine their behaviors and mindsets in order to explore new possibilities and choices.
Meet the people leading the conversation
Board Leadership & Managing Difficult Board Dynamics
Facilitated by Marsie Silvestro & Sarah Silva
Navigating board relationships is one of the most common — and least supported — challenges faced by nonprofit executive directors. This session creates space for practical learning and peer dialogue around managing difficult board dynamics and strengthening board-staff collaboration. Registration is required. This event is free.
Transformational Change Leadership
This session is part of a transformative two-year program, designed for women of color leaders in northern New Mexico's nonprofit sector.
Artificial Intelligence for the Workplace: Session 1
Presented in partnership with the Santa Fe Community College
Session one of a two-part virtual training designed to introduce nonprofit staff to the fundamentals of AI and explores practical, ethical ways AI tools can support productivity, decision-making, and day-to-day work. Participants must attend both sessions on February 17 and February 24.
