Dear Friends & Partners,
June is a season of endings and beginnings with kids ending a school year, graduation celebrations, etc. Change is always happening beneath the surface of things but there are moments when we feel it and see it more poignantly. We feel an extra dose of change this June on a personal level as our middle child just graduated from high school and is heading off to college this Fall.
At IDF, we feel a similar poignancy of change as we announce with our colleague and founding executive director, Debra Veth, her plans to transition from her role at IDF into a new season of her career in an operating role within a non-profit organization. This transition will unfold in the coming months, but we wanted to let you, our friends and partners, know of this emerging change while it is happening and also pause to acknowledge and express our gratitude to Deb for her eight years of service to IDF.
In so many ways, Deb has left an indelible imprint on all we do at IDF. She has touched so many with her kindness and her signature strategic/operational mind that knows how to make stuff happen, builds and develops systems, and is ever looking for ways to make connections, ask good questions, add value, and enlarge the pie of goodness and justice in our world. It is an understatement to say that we would not be who we are today as a foundation without her finger prints on all levels of our work. We will miss her greatly.
Yet in this season of change, we feel great satisfaction knowing that wherever her career path takes her, we will still be colleagues in the work of social change and she will take all that she has done and learned in her work at IDF and apply it to make change happen in a new and different setting/role but toward the same larger goals that gave birth to IDF.
Know that as this change happens the IDF board continues to be committed to the same mission and values and is taking this opportunity to reflect and strategize as we head into this next chapter in IDF’s journey.
Please feel free to contact Deb directly if you have any questions or would like to talk with her about what’s next.
Deb, may love and blessings follow you wherever you invest your high ideals and talents next. Thank you for all you have done and will do to roll up your sleeves to do your part to make our world a little more kind and just. Thanks from the bottom of our hearts for your partnership over these past eight years and your contribution to the larger field of philanthropy.
All the best to you our friends and partners near and far in whatever season of change June is bringing your way,
Emily