August 2021

The time has come. After nearly 38 years leading Osborne Association, I am planning to step down…move on…take leave…but decidedly not to “retire”.

Osborne’s Board of Directors will soon be sharing the plans they have developed for the search and transition ahead. I will remain as CEO until a successor is chosen and comes aboard, likely early in 2022. And I will remain in a new role – as a fundraiser or hellraiser -- for as much time as is needed to support the transition.

As most of the Osborne family knows (and by family, I mean our board and staff as well as the family of founder Thomas Mott Osborne), I had always planned to stay until we opened Fulton, the former prison that was deeded to Osborne in 2015 to redevelop as a community reentry center. Little did I know that the process would span more than 7 years. But the end (or, really, the beginning) is now in sight. Now that we are getting back inside jails, prisons, and our community sites, and I am confident that I will get to cut the Fulton ribbon by the Spring Equinox (in whatever role I have at the time), I think the time is right.

It also struck me that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Attica Uprising, which remains the single most transformative event of my life, and the source of all that transpired in my personal and professional life since then. I believe most of those working at Osborne today were not even alive 50 years ago, but they carry on the struggle in ways that inspire and uplift me.

And this became even clearer with the onset of Covid. One of the few upsides of the last 16 “remote” months was that it gave me the opportunity to get to know a lot more of our amazing staff who live and work all over the state, as well as colleagues in organizations that walk along our path. And in some ways I had even more access to our hard working Board than ever before. (Turns out, they are a lot more fun than I thought. Also generous.)

I will still be at Osborne for quite a while so it’s not time for me to talk about what we’ve accomplished over the last 37 years. I’m still looking ahead. And what I see is that this is a good moment for new leadership with fresh energy and ideas. In the coming weeks we will be launching a new website and logo, in the coming months a race equity plan, fundraising plan, communications plan, and strategic plan, all while I am creating my own plan for (as board member Alfonso Wyatt would say) re-firing, not retiring.

I do not take for granted the privilege of having been able to spend more than half a century in the struggle for liberation, or the blessing of knowing that young people, Black people, people of color, people who have experienced their own or a loved one’s incarceration, and people of conscience will pick up wherever and whenever I leave off/move on. La lucha continua.