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Tjada D’Oyen McKenna is the first woman — and Black — to head the international charity Mercy Corps, an organization based in the United States that she has led since 2020. She has moved in and out of the public and private sectors over her career only to discover that “I’m living my purpose,” she said, in working for the former, even if it means “doing more with less” as the number of people with staggering needs keep growing worldwide.
She is also determined not only to help other women achieve their highest ambitions, but also to empower women of color to reach their full potential. ” I hope there are more of us, women and CEOs, so that seeing for other people like me becomes general and not a novelty,” McKenna said.
McKenna was born into a privileged background in Washington, D. C. , to parents who worked in public service: her mother was a government lawyer and her father a senior executive in networked school systems. When she was younger, she was looking to stay in those civic footsteps, but a summer internship at General Electric Corporation when she was 16 led her to spend a decade in the corporate world.
The internship helped McKenna stay informed about opportunities in the personal sector, she told PassBlue in a Zoom interview. McKenna, 47, now runs a global organization that provides a lifeline to others caught in the middle of wars and blunders, far from the corporate world where she began her career. Her work focuses on for-profit companies, such as McKinsey & Company, American Express, General Electric – and a government project under former President Barack Obama – that prepare her for what she calls the “world of social impact. ” .
“Our nonprofits are also businesses,” he said. “Understand the business angle and efficiency. This has allowed us to work with private sector actors, build those relationships and maximize them for social benefits. So there’s a little bit of translation that I can do as well. We have our hearts, we have our values, but we also lead organizations of people. And that refers to a lot of business elements.
McKenna, who still lives in Washington, D. C. , earned a bachelor’s degree in government and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard. She grew up with books and skipped kindergarten because she may have started reading at an early age, thanks to her older siblings. But McKenna: His formative years weren’t limited to the comfort afforded him by his family. She was also aware of the color of her skin and how others treated her.
McKenna said she had a happy formative few years and mentioned the privileges she had (traveling to Paris when she was 11), but said helping others was where she discovered joy. This joy motivated her to quit her high-paying corporate job in 2015 to enroll. for the public sector and, eventually, for the non-profit sector.
“I just decided I needed to follow my passion and that I would have enough to live even with the major pay cut,” she said. “Now, I feel like everything that I’m trying to do in life is very aligned. I feel very good about my family life. I feel like I’m living my purpose.”
McKenna still earns a living wage at Mercy Corps. According to Comparably, which estimates salary levels for giant companies, the average executive salary at Mercy is $231,038. The highest-paid executive earns $450,000 and the lowest-paid executive earns $53,000.
As the leader of Mercy Corps, which has positions in 40 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, McKenna leads another 6,000 people who serve the wishes of some 37 million people. stop the group’s presence. The organization also works, for example, in Gaza, where Palestinians are on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations, due to the continuous bombardment of the enclave by the Israel Defense Forces while targeting Hamas. . As McKenna tweeted on Dec. 24: “We want a lasting ceasefire, an end to the siege, and the ability to massively increase humanitarian aid. “
In this interview for PassBlue’s Women as Changemakers column, McKenna talks about her childhood, what motivates her professionally, and what it meant to be Mercy Corps’ first female leader.
The interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.
PassBle: What does six-year-old Tjada like?
McKenna: I learned to read from a very young age. And I skipped kindergarten because I can read very early and I read pretty well. I’m also the youngest kid and a bit of an only child, as my siblings are 11 and 12 years older than me. especially the things that appealed to adults. I was curious, and maybe my parents paid too much attention to me. My favorite room in my space was this huge library. Ever since I grew up in Washington, D. C. , every morning the Washington Post would come in. And my circle of family would sit down and read. I am also the only black student in my elementary school.
PassBlue: How does it feel to be the only black woman in the class?
McKenna: I grew up in the 1980s, which means my parents were kids in the 1950s and 1960s and had attended segregated schools. They were scared for me and there were one or two instances where assumptions were made. For example, when I got to first grade, I sent for remedial reading on the first day when, in reality, I was reading well above grade. I knew I looked different, that my hair was different, but it was still a fulfilling childhood. Things got harder when we got in our teens because that’s when other people start to fall in love and form relationships and everything is very segregated.
PassBlue: How has your family shaped you as a person?
McKenna: My parents were largely young people in the civil rights movement of the ’60s. They were also a bit Pan-Africanist. So I had a strong sense of who I was, that I belonged to a network of paintings, and that I was a product and representative of black America. The expression that my circle of relatives used a lot was: you have to paint twice as hard to get. the same result. So I have this sense of difference and I want to stand out for my netpaintings. But also to have a fair chance. There are times when I think other people will judge me and think I’m jumping on a problem. My generation was trained to have compatibility and thrive through compatibility, but I’m not afraid that other people will think I’m selfish. Being the black woman in the room means I have to communicate about diversity, prepare for it, and acknowledge that everything is okay.
PassBlue: What do you think of Harvard as a Black student?
McKenna: I enjoyed being around a Black community at Harvard. We supported each other and stuck together as we navigated it all. Harvard is where I became aware of the hidden tax of being a Black student in white environments. For example, as a community we would help high school students with admissions essays, help younger people, do volunteer work. There was a well-known conservative professor on campus whose name was Harvey Mansfield. He made a statement that grade inflation was rampant and linked to affirmative action.
We went through the tension of other people wondering why we were in school, and then we spent more time protesting against this teacher. At those protests, I learned that non-Black people don’t have those extra burdens and can spend time reading or concentrating. It’s almost like a trap. But I’m grateful for my time at Harvard and for the connections and friends I’ve made. We all continue to be very supportive.
PassBlue: Were there any incidents or occasions in your formative years that had a profound influence on you?
McKenna: I went to high school in a town [Stamford, Conn.] that was very corporate. I happened to get this internship at GE. It was the first time I realized that there was a lot of power and opportunity in the private sector. Until that point, I thought that the public sector — government and legislation — were the way to really drive change.
PassBlue: But you left the private sector. How was the transition?
McKenna: At some point in the private sector, I realized I was working so hard and giving so much of myself, but I wasn’t fully fulfilled. But the other side is that in an environment where people are being asked to do more with less, where the needs of the world are greater and greater, we have to realize that our nonprofit institutions, they’re also businesses. We also have to operate efficiently, we have to understand the bottom line, we have to make trade-offs and market economies for our staff, so we can serve our participants. I was working really hard, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity for a personal life, I certainly wasn’t volunteering and engaging in the community, as much as I thought I would. I wasn’t saving anyone’s life, I wasn’t having the impact that I would die being proud of. At some point, I just decided I needed to follow my passion and that I would have enough to live on even with the major pay cut. Now, I feel like everything that I’m trying to do in life is very aligned. I feel very good about my family life. I feel like I’m living my purpose. The other thing I have to acknowledge is that if I hadn’t been successful, if it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I still had the credentials to go back to the private sector. I have the privilege of two Harvard degrees and fallback options.
PassBlue: Do annual meetings like the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September promote humanitarian development?
McKenna: One thing I learned in government is the concept of “advertisers. “Let me explain: what occasions like this do, especially for managers and think tanks, is that it’s a time when everyone is going to show their face. That’s why people are preparing to take the first steps to announce a partnership or new funding, or publish one more article highlighting the issues. So things like this are an herbal reinforcement mechanism to get other people to follow suit. This year’s United Nations General Assembly seemed disjointed, but everything was connected. The war in Ukraine, Covid, has had terrible effects on all the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and has also created a climate conducive to more fighting and more poverty and the problems that are causing some of the political instability that we are experiencing today. So all of those things are very connected. I feel that the South is becoming more assertive, and I hope that those statements, and the interconnectedness of all of them, will lead to more investment to help the other people in those countries.
PassBlue: How does it feel to be the first female executive director of Mercy Corps?
McKenna: I have loved leading Mercy Corps, it’s one of the great development humanitarian organizations. So many of the people we serve and our employee base are people of color, so in that sense, it’s been wonderful. There are different things we face as women. I have two young children. So being a CEO with two young children is different. My 10-year-old has Googled me at school and sees me come up. He is very proud. He likes to tell people, my mom is a CEO, and he also has picked up that that is rare. So, I am hoping there will be more of us — women and CEOs — so that seeing people like me can become normal and not a novelty. My leadership style is straightforward. It’s authentic. Frankly, the busier I get, the less time I have to mask and pretend that I’m someone I am not. I will acknowledge my flaws, I’ll acknowledge my weak sides and really try to build a team that complements those.
PassBlue: What were the demanding situations for Mercy Corps?
McKenna: We all face industry challenges, like how can we stay focused on the problems?My personal challenge is to drive the debate on diversity, because it is the only way to be a leading organization in the future. I think we want to reflect the populations we serve. I got used to being the outlier in a room. I was given the habit of going into the room with all the men, or with all the very rich people, because they are the ones who finance. But we can rarely feel alone. Or when your attitude is so different, you may feel lonely. I’m glad to be in the room. I keep reminding myself that it’s okay to be in the room, even when I feel out of position or stick out like a sore thumb. I appreciate the help I get from others. Helene Gayle was the first to lead CARE ten years ago. She was the first black woman to lead an organization like this. She looks at me. That’s also why it’s great to have a small helping village.
PassBlue: What is the effect of worldwide conflict on the work you do at Mercy Corps?
McKenna: What is unique about Mercy Corps is that in addition to having a mandate around humanitarian aid development, we also have an equally strong third pillar, around conflict prevention and peacebuilding. That is why we have tended to thrive and work in the most difficult situations to live in. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, on my next vacation I went to Poland. Then I went to Lebanon and quickly saw the effect of food prices. Shortly after, I traveled to Somalia in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history and now have to face the consequences of even more expensive and scarce food and the diversion of all humanitarian resources. We have had primary systems in Sudan, Niger and the Central African Republic. We have always been in the middle of this. Afghanistan is our longest continuous presence in the country. We have been there since the 80s. We were there with the first Taliban. Our largest donors have a war in their backyard, so the Russian war in Ukraine has affected our painting. Here we return to the commercial aspect of our paintings. We just want to do more with less.
This article has been updated to correct the town where McKenna went to high school (Stamford, Conn.) and the number of Mercy Corps employees (6,000).
Damilola Banjo holds a Master of Science from Columbia University’s School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He worked as a manufacturer for NPR’s WAFE station in Charlotte, North Carolina; for the BBC as an investigative journalist; and as an investigative journalist for Sahara Reporters Media.
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