[Image description: Jas Hall and Shannon Ellis stand near each other, smiling, while a tree and its branches furl out from behind them.]
Dear CompassPoint Community,
We are excited to share that longtime staff member Jas Hall joins the executive leadership team with Shannon Ellis as CompassPoint’s Associate Executive Director!
Jas brings to this new executive role a wealth of experience and knowledge in organizational leadership, particularly in tending to and creating equitable and human-centered systems that enrich our learning spaces and work culture. Jas started at CompassPoint as a Project Coordinator in 2016, moved into the position of Associate Project Director from 2018 to 2019, then served as a Project Director from 2019 to 2024. Over the course of her time in the organization, Jas has been a steadfast leader in designing and championing policies, practices, and culture shifts that promote pro-Blackness, relationship building, and community care. Jas also has experience as a curriculum designer and facilitator of several CompassPoint core programs, including 6 cohorts of the Self-Care for Black Women in Leadership series, 2 cohorts of the Self-Care for Black Folks series, the Supervision: Relationships and Structures That Help Us Thrive workshop, and the HR peer network cafes.
“It has been a true gift to land in an organization that has invested in my growth as a leader and valued my contributions,” says Jas. “I am excited to bring my talents and wisdom into this role and steward CompassPoint in the direction of liberation.”
Jas and Shannon have worked closely together throughout a period of significant change at CompassPoint. They enter this new partnership with a strong foundation of trust, care, and shared commitment to equity and justice.
“Jas has been a central figure in the work we’ve been doing to shift our organizational strategy and culture over the past 8 years, since she first entered the organization,” says Shannon. “Her leadership brings a combination of integrity, strategy, and heart that is powerful and transformative.”
CompassPoint Board Co-Chair, Ada Palotai, adds: “In my time sitting on the Board, I have seen and admired the many ways Jas has contributed to CompassPoint’s growth. She has supported the organization in navigating turmoil and transition with grace, compassion, levity and integrity. We are thrilled to have Jas in this new role, and know that her gifts and talents will beautifully enrich our continued learning journey, in service of our strategic vision of transformative social change and collective liberation.”
As Jas and Shannon step into a new executive leadership formation at CompassPoint, we continue as an organization to deepen our commitment to the transformative shifts we have been working toward in recent years. It remains our priority as staff and board to lend our collective efforts to steering a 50-year-old leadership development and capacity building organization in a strategic direction that focuses more explicitly on internally as well as externally supporting and developing the leadership of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. It is also our aim to continue activating capacity building and leadership development as mechanisms for power building and ultimately changing material conditions for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
As we’ve shared in previous communications, CompassPoint is 6 years into our transition to a shared executive leadership model, and it has not been without its challenges and deep learnings as an organization. Inviting Jas to an Associate Executive Director position, rather than returning immediately to a Co-Executive Director formation, is a conscious choice grounded in some of the lessons we’ve learned from previous executive departures. While CompassPoint continues to be committed to growing BIPOC leadership and a shared executive leadership approach, we are also taking the time to:
1) More effectively support and onboard executive leaders into the strategic vision of the organization and the responsibilities of the role.
2) Get clearer on the structural and relational conditions needed for co-executive partnerships to fully thrive, and in particular, for Black women and women of color executive leaders to be set up for success.
It is our intention to share more intimately our learnings around practicing shared and distributed leadership in the months to come.
In the meantime, we extend our deepest gratitude and congratulations to Jas as she steps into this new role at our organization, and invite others in our community to offer their well wishes.
In partnership and solidarity,
The CompassPoint Team
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