Oppressive Office Culture. Run. - Program Associate for Knowledge Management Women's Learning Partnership Employee Review

-Inspiring work with partner organizations in the Global South (supporting women's rights and leadership) -Working with a collaborative, dedicated and compassionate team (sisterhood and solidarity) -WLP highly values the talents and work of their interns

-Small team w/a lot of work

The mission and vision of the organization is commendable, and plenty of impactful work has been done over the years. The staff I worked with (most of whom quit over the past year) were some of the smartest, kindest, and most dedicated people I have ever met. The partner organizations are similarly impressive, doing incredible work with limited resources and time. The leaders of the partner organizations are brilliant and inspiring and I learned so much working with them. This organization has huge potential.

WLP has a serious management problem that will lead to the dissolution of the organization if it is not addressed. The founder and former president of the organization (who reluctantly departed in 2024) was often dictatorial and destroyed many fruitful partnerships because of her need for control. However, she was a powerhouse and very competent, therefore leading the organization to many successes during her tenure. It was an epitomic case of founder's syndrome, and she did not set up the organization for success after her departure. Much of the success she had was only achievable by her and her connections that she did not pass on. The bigger issue now is the two Executive Directors who took her place who are an unfortunate mix of completely incompetent and also disrespectful and rude to their staff. Despite having a brilliant, hardworking, and passionate staff, both of the EDs spend almost all of their time micromanaging three people and not raising any funds or implementing any new programs. They are unable to provide any actual leadership, and regularly take credit for the accomplishments of their staff despite undermining their efforts at every turn. In 2024, they succeeded in pushing out multiple staff members who had been at the organization for years or decades. They have created a culture of fear and abuse that has led to other staff quitting with no job lined even during this time of huge upheaval in the ID job market. Staff is made to spend hours upon hours in internal meetings every week where both EDs complain about how busy they are and guilt staff for not having "sympathy" for them, meanwhile they are dismissive at best and cruel at worst when staff raise any concerns. They do not let even senior staff attend any meetings on their own, even sending an email to an internal partner without their permission is an offense. The EDs are also often disrespectful to the partners (who do 99% of the program implementation). For an organization that claims to be "bottom-up" and "locally-led" this disrespect was palpable. Apart from their disrespect and rudeness to anyone who is not themselves, they are also extremely incompetent. They are unable to offer any program ideas, fail to maintain relationships with key stakeholders, and also fail to implement existing programs because of their lack of time management or ability to delegate anything. Unfortunately, the board of directors is not very involved in the governance of the organization, and do not seem particularly interested in its success. As WLP is now almost completely financially insolvent, I do not think the organization will last much longer. Ultimately, there is absolutely nothing feminist about the secretariat.