Just like a business, Conscious Capitalism of Central Maryland (C3MD) is reviewing progress from 2018 and identifying goals for 2019. As a transparent, nonprofit organization, sharing that information with current and future members is important. To that end, we interviewed our fearless leader, Executive Director Wendy Moomaw, about her thoughts on where we are and where we are going.
Hi Wendy, thanks for joining us today. Overall, how do you think the year went?
Surprisingly well, I believe. In 2017, we started under a new leadership team and began building our community by offering programs focused on the Conscious Capitalism Pillars to reach out into the community. There were many initiatives we wanted to develop, however, we had to face the reality that we didn’t have the resources to devote to each one. So, in 2018, we stepped back and picked a few key initiatives that we wanted to focus our efforts on.
What were those initiatives and why were you surprised at their success?
Our team decided to apply to be part of the Leadership Howard County Project. As an award recipient, we have been assigned a group of senior leaders from the class of 2019 Leadership Premier, who will be researching challenges that businesses in our community face to become conscious companies. We are excited to be able to benefit from the information these leaders will gather. Since we were in competition with other nonprofits in the region, I was surprised and delighted that C3MD was selected!
We also coordinated and promoted Ignite Howard County. We chose to sponsor and run this event because it was already known in the community, and many on our leadership team, myself included, had participated in previous Ignite events. While I was truly pleased with how well our team executed a large-scale event, including finding sponsors and engaging the community, I was surprised to discover the importance of storytelling in building a conscious environment.
How do you mean?
Building trust and empathy is critical to engage our audience members, allowing us to broaden our platform to connect with a wider community. In fact, building trust is important in order to develop a conscious culture in any organization. In retrospect, I think 2018 was a year of discovering who we want to be as an organization.
And that started with our leadership team – who are an amazing group of people. They were willing to learn and grow toward the ideas behind conscious leadership. The group was candid, supportive and challenged each other to commit fully to the concept of “we.” Even when there were bumps in the road, they remained positive and flexible to maintain a conscious environment.
It sounds like you were able to lay the groundwork for future growth. So, what does that mean for 2019? What are C3MD’s goals for next year?
For 2019, we want to strengthen the connections in the community that we started building this year – focusing on creating a conscious culture and making a positive impact in the community. And we want to do that by building small communities within our organization.
The Conscious Collaboratory is one community we want to build. This will include about four local leaders to discuss current business issues, innovate ideas and provide members with greater opportunities to connect.
We also want to host more meetings like Ignite Afterglow (in early December), which focused on personal storytelling, aimed to build trust and connect more people. We want people to feel good about being here and helping local businesses create a positive impact in the community. Having a safe place to talk about these concepts allows businesses to learn about the conscious elements, then take back to their companies and innovate in their own way.
Businesses, even those who are in the same field, are not in competition to become more conscious. Being a more conscious business is good for all of us. Our goal is to find out what the pain points are that companies face in becoming a conscious business and develop programming to help companies overcome them.
Thank you, Wendy! The new year is full of new excitement and possibilities for growth and innovation. We are looking forward to the journey!