The Salt in the Stew: Leadership, Health, and Building a Culture of Care

In this installment of the CEO Chronicles, I speak with Jessica Solomon, facilitator, cultural worker, and organizational development practitioner, about one of the most overlooked dimensions of leadership: care — for your organization, your team, and yourself. Jess worked with Fractured Atlas beginning in 2021, helping us rebuild trust and culture during a period of real upheaval, and she brings that same depth and honesty to this conversation. Give it a listen and let us know what questions you have for Jess (or myself) in the comments 💬

Theresa: I'm sitting down with Jessica Solomon, facilitator, cultural worker, and organizational development practitioner. We're going to be speaking about navigating health and care as a leader. Jess and I met in 2021 when Fractured Atlas was looking for an organizational development partner to help strengthen our internal trust and communication. We'd gone through a number of leadership transitions and program sunsets and needed to ground ourselves and build a culture for what was going to move forward. We contracted with Art in Praxis, Jess's OD consulting practice. Art in Praxis helped us develop stronger communication and trust and establish a culture of care. During that time, I was also experiencing health challenges of my own. Jess helped me develop a plan of action that prioritized my needs while keeping me present to the needs of Fractured Atlas. Welcome, Jess.

Jess: So glad to be here. It's nice to be back in this capacity.

Theresa: Tell us how you got into this type of work.

Jess: I came into this work formally after being in the nonprofit sector and education. As a beneficiary of afterschool programs, I ended up working inside these spaces — and they did not feel how they felt when I was young. People and systems and how to support folks in showing up to do their best work has always been a theme. I left the nonprofit sector to come back into full-time practice after getting a master's in Organizational Development, and I started theater making — thinking about how to bring creativity and story into the work of planned change.

Theresa: What aspects of your personal life do you consciously bring to your role as a leader?

Jess: I'm always looking at patterns, context, thinking about energy — especially as someone who facilitates a whole space for groups. I'm thinking about relationships, about creativity and how we can stretch our imaginations. I'm committed to my nervous system, so I'm always bringing some sense of somatics and breath, even if it's just for me.

Theresa: It's always a balance between how much work enters your personal life and how much personal life enters work. For a lot of us they're intertwined, and it's healthy to have boundaries with both — though sometimes hard to set them. One thing I appreciated about working with you was recognizing that when you go through a health crisis, those boundaries can no longer be movable. You have to set them and honor them consistently.

Jess: A boundary is a way of showing care for other people as well. And sometimes what worked in the past needs to be reevaluated. That tune you used to dance to doesn't work the same way anymore. So what's next? How are you going to pivot?

Theresa: How does theater making show up in your work?

Jess: It looks like a lot of storytelling. I'm working with a group of executives right now who want to strengthen their relationships, and we're working through trust by doing story circles. "Tell a story about a time you made a commitment and either honored it or didn't." "Give an example of a time you were reliable and what that meant." Using story as a way to make connections between what may have happened in your past and what might be happening inside a system has always been a go-to. I also like giving groups a scenario and allowing them to lean into imagination — thinking about how they might resolve it with new skills they're developing.

Theresa: Was there a moment when the importance of health and care at work became a real focus for you?

Jess: I moved back home to Baltimore in 2015, after Freddie Gray was murdered. When I came home, there was grief and a sense of urgency, and a lot of folks I was sitting with were burnt out and sad. When you're trying to get your basic needs met and navigating loss, you don't have a lot of energy for creativity or imagination. I think about that Toni Morrison quote about how racism is here to distract us — I saw what that was doing to the people around me. Then I ended up in local philanthropy, funding arts and social change projects, and I saw that grief and burnout showing up in the art and in what people were asking for.

That was before COVID. Then, at the height of COVID, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. As a consultant, my livelihood is largely based on my output — so this tension between clearly needing to slow down and the diagnosis being exacerbated by stress was a sobering moment. I had to get clear about what I would require of myself moving forward, not just to get through a flare-up, but to re-imagine my business. I had to scale back. There was a lot of work to be done, I was saying yes to a lot of things, and I had to ask: what is the work that is mine to do? How can I support the organizations I feel aligned with, knowing that a culture of care is clearly necessary?

Theresa: Our bodies are really powerful storytellers. It's powerful for you to talk about how your body told you it needed something — especially given my own experience, where I needed to listen to professionals rather than my own body's signals. One thing you and I discovered was that there are so few resources out there for leaders going through anything health-related. Have you seen more pop up since then?

Jess: It was surprising that there weren't resources named that way — though it also speaks to a larger set of values. We could barely get people to mask, so part of me wasn't entirely surprised. When I began to deal with my diagnosis, many other people — particularly women of color — started coming to me asking about symptoms and how to navigate. There have been articles written about women with autoimmune diseases and how stress exacerbates them, and a lot of spaces in the social sector are high stress. I've been building a culture of care library for organizations and leaders, and I'm happy to share that link. Nonprofit Quarterly has done an amazing job shoring up resources around care and leadership. But I'd like to see more — hotlines, checklists to take to doctors, guidance for organizations on how to support people navigating illness. I would like to see more of them, particularly for people like me who are supporting organizations.

Theresa: What's the biggest obstacle for leaders in instituting a culture of care?

Jess: It starts with the leader. What is your relationship to care? How does it already show up in your organization? If a leader prioritizes speed and output and optics, this could be a challenge. Because culture change is not overnight. It's like the salt in the stew. What might you look at beyond the surface level? What's the layer beneath that, and beneath that? What do your foundational documents say about care? Who gets to make decisions about it? It definitely starts with leadership.

Theresa: As a leader, you have to be invested in the culture you're building — it's for you, too. You can't build things only because staff wants them. A culture of care starts with the leader and has to be embodied by the leader. If you're telling people to take time off for health needs and you're not doing that yourself, it signals a different set of expectations. If you tend toward overworking, you might fall into patterns that contradict what you're saying. The power is in noticing that and working to correct it.

Jess: There are times when it might feel easier to revert to old ways of being. But the power is in the noticing and then committing to the new practice. It's a journey. I also think leaders need a place to process — a community, a coach, a therapist. In the social sector especially, it's important to have space where you get to show up fully without having to hold for others. And it requires not just one leader but all the leaders and influencers across the organization. Who are the people who will be supportive in making the shift? You need buy-in and people who can tell the story alongside you.

Theresa: Tell us what's coming down the pike for you.

Jess: Art in Praxis has evolved into a studio. I'm still providing organizational development, facilitation, and coaching, but I'm approaching it with the premise that culture is the operating system — it shapes everything. Part of that work has been delving into stand-up comedy. I've been thinking about how levity gives us space to talk about truths in a different way and find new points of entry. Part of the work in the studio has also been around collapse studies. I'm in end-of-life doula training, thinking about endings and how to support organizations and systems facing that kind of change. Grief is real, and there are ways to move through it in service of something new. I'm also developing a resource for leaders who want to learn how to become end-of-life doulas in the midst of systemic change — how do we help lay some things to rest and bring out the best of what they were, in service of what comes next?

Two organizations also holding space in change management and facilitation: Change Elemental and Brava Leaders — both have excellent blogs and resources. And I'm excited to bring out a choice points decision deck this spring — a tool that groups, partners, and organizations can use to move through challenging decisions.

Theresa: Thank you so much for your time, Jess. To everyone listening, thank you for tuning into the CEO Chronicles series. If you have leadership thoughts or questions, comment below or email us at media@fracturedatlas.org.