Friendship and partnership are the foundation of NationBuilder. And today, I am overjoyed to announce that my friend, the extraordinary Hilary Doe, is now NationBuilder’s president.
Hilary started at NationBuilder in September 2013 as a director of business development. She was still in a PhD program at Princeton, studying movement building. Her intention was to go back, get her doctorate, and probably start her own organization (having recently passed the torch at the Roosevelt Institute, where she’d built one of the country’s most effective networks). But as she says, it was more inspiring to equip leaders building movements around the world than it was to study them. So she stayed.
When Jim went into the ICU in June 2017, Hilary, by then our vice president of strategy, was my first phone call, and over the next few months became our de facto head of finance. While we’d always had a great working relationship, fighting fires together during that extraordinarily precarious time started us down a path I’m not sure either of us expected. She became our chief strategy officer, leading our go to market motion and working with me on our most critical decisions.
After Jim’s death three years ago, it was hard to imagine I could feel that kind of partnership in this work again—the truly singular experience of building something with someone else, knowing you are all in, that you’re living and breathing the vision and the daily stakes together.
But that—alongside the fiercest leadership team ever—is exactly what I feel with Hilary. I am grateful to her every day. Grateful that she didn’t return to finish her PhD. Grateful that she said yes when I asked her to take on crazy challenge after crazy challenge. And grateful for each day that we work together—dreaming up the future of NationBuilder and beyond.
And in no way are we doing this alone. I am honored every second to work with our brilliant colleagues on NationBuilder’s leadership team—Gina, Lisa, Jay, Jon, Jesse, Melody, and Dae—who have built this thriving, independent, growing, female-led company, together.
The strength of these friendships and partnerships power our work and community. They power NationBuilder. Congratulations to our whole team and congratulations to our new president, the one and only, Hilary Doe!
