Greetings, Community.

As we enter this new year, many of us are doing so in a season that already carries weight—intensified by a society under strain. Rising uncertainty, deepening inequities, and persistent threats to our collective well-being are shaping this moment. It holds fear, fatigue, anger, and grief—and a kind of low-grade vigilance that never fully turns off.

Through conversations with our members, I know that many of you are also carrying heaviness, exhaustion, and uncertainty. And I hear the quiet question underneath conversations across our field—across roles, titles, and years of experience alike: 

How do we keep going when the ground keeps shifting beneath us?

January now arrives with a particular tenderness for me. My mother shared her birthday, January 15th, with Dr. King, and this time of year feels different in her absence. When she passed a few days after our 2024 conference in New Orleans, I returned to this work grieving, disoriented, and still holding a vision much larger than myself. 

Holding both personal grief and collective responsibility has clarified something for me: complexity has always been part of this work.

In my mind, EPIP has always been an organization born in complexity. But the scale and pace of what we are being asked to hold right now is significant. Political volatility… Organized pushback against racial and social justice efforts... Economic uncertainty... Organizational change... Personal loss... 

For many of us, these are not abstract forces. They are shaping our days, our relationships, our bodies, and our work.

As I reflect on my sixth year as President & CEO of EPIP, I am reminded that I stepped into this role—my first at this level of organizational stewardship—at the height of a global pandemic, when the world as we knew it cracked open and no one could see the path forward. Since then, I have learned that leadership is about staying present when the answers are not yet clear—and being willing to take a step, even when the ground is shifting.

Last year, EPIP hosted a Leadership Salon in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, centered on collective care for women of color in philanthropy. I was joined by Brandi Howard, President & CEO of East Bay Community Foundation, and together we reflected on what it means to lead through complexity, contradiction, and crisis—while remaining rooted in care, clarity, and purpose. What I shared then is what I hold even more deeply now: leadership is an invitation to renew while still moving forward.

Renewal means that you have enough.

Enough breath.

Enough clarity.

Enough will to continue.

Renewal doesn’t promise safety, nor does it promise prolonged relief.  Renewal is part of how we build resilience without burnout. And resilience is a critical part of resistance.

This year marks a threshold for EPIP. We are preparing to launch our new strategic framework at our national conference in Chicago this June. We are entering a new chapter in how we show up for one another and for the field. And as we step into this next phase, I want us to ground ourselves not only in urgency—but in movement shaped by purpose, values, and care.

Over the course of this year, we will weave our values more explicitly into our work as lived practices and tools you can carry into your leadership. We will continue asking what it means to lead with integrity, courage, care, and imagination when the world feels unstable. We will make room for both truth and possibility. We will honor what is heavy—without letting it define what is possible.

This is how we choose to remain whole.

Renewal is how we sustain the flame, and it is how we continue—together.

Rooted and Ready,

S. Gray

President & CEO, EPIP