Friends Of Nest Charter School Inc: Fill & Download for Free

Another of my corporate sojourn entanglements. This one involved 3 non-profits and an Ivy League university and an Ivy League University club.The Yale Club & The Charter School: Left Once, Fired 3 TimesIt starts out at a charter school where I’m the liaison between the Superintendent of the charter school and the fuller non-profit owning agency that was starting the school. Since I’d been at the larger company for consulting gig at the behest of the consulting company owner, who literally begged me to take the assignment for 3 months to assist an insane Director, I was tapped, after being fired 3 times in 3 months by the Director, by the Superintendent.Okay, the Director, Regina wanted to be the Superintendent but the CEO of the non-profit felt, rightfully so, that though she had extensive experience in programmatic management, she didn’t have the experience or degrees to be the Superintendent. So he brought in Doreen.Regina’s right-hand assistant goes on vacation/maternity leave and I’m languishing at the Yale Club when my friend Liz calls and says Regina has run through 5 people while her right hand is on maternity leave. Could I jump in? she’ll pay my fee but she needs someone who’s more than an assistant, she needs a manager, who will act as an executive assistant to hold onto the overall contract. There are 1000+ jobs within this non-profit, 10% potential through the consulting firm, she doesn’t want to lose the account.I balk. Liz wants me, on a Friday afternoon, to go uptown to interview with Regina who says in the office extremely late hours. I’m in jeans, Timberlands and a comfy sweater, sequestered off in the back offices of the Yale Club—-eating good free food that they provided for the staff, reading Vanity Fair, probably typing up a manuscript. It was a cushy assignment for the summer that didn’t involve a lot of work just software know-how and the ability to sit alone in a back office for 8 hours and not fall asleep.“Can I do it on Monday?” I lived in Queens so it would be a 3-hour roundtrip to go home, change and then come back to Manhattan.“Don’t change,” Liz begs. “Regina, who doesn’t even like oxygen, loves your resume. Just go.”“It’s unprofessional.”“Just go.”“I’m in jeans, Liz!”“Go!”“It won’t look right!”“Look, Kyle, it’s a Black company and I think my mistake has been not sending specifically a highly qualified, professional Black person there. You’re my best Black person, ever. I’m nearly doubling your rate. Go.”“Wow, Liz, that’s very honest. You know how I appreciate near acidic honesty, you temptress you!”“I think they need a Black person. A good one.”“Let them know ahead of time I’m coming from the bowels of the Yale Club on a dress down Friday….”“I will, I will.”I go.Great interview. Regina and I like each other. Get the position.Regina proceeds to fire me 3 times and then re-hire me 3 times over the next 3 months. Generally, on a Friday, she’d call Liz and fire me, then on Saturday, she’d re-hire me. The third time Liz warns her that I might no longer be available.Turns out Mary, working for the Superintendent and having contact with me, though the school administrative offices are on another floor, regularly brings me overlapping work. Mary also passes the secret message that when I have a private moment could I wander up to the Superintendent’s office for a chat? I do. The Sueprintdnet says that she’s heard great things about me around the company for the past 3 months, in spite of working for Regina. When will my assignment end? Would I consider coming to work for her when it does and the other lady returns from maternity leave? I have a unique skill now of having an educational background on my resume and having worked for the parent company—-she needs someone who understands both worlds that she’s straddling.I lay out the insanity of Regina and her regular firings and rehirings.Doreen says she’ll handle it, in fact, she’s been looking for a test case to leverage to the CEO about power structures—that she should be Number 3 behind him and the VP, and not Regina, who has been there longer (and ostensibly helped to bury some bodies.)I agree. The salary offer though is low but Liz, who is now on a conference call offers to pay me for a period of time a second check plus benefits plus I’ll learn the ins and outs of school design, again so she can keep the account. The Superintendent says her employment contract is for 2 years, that will be our agreed time of employment. We all agree.A few days later Regina fires me for the 4th time. Calls Saturday, and Liz says I’m no longer available. I arrive promptly Monday morning and go one floor above where I was and sit at my new desk.By noon the shit hits the corporate fan.The CEO, Regina, and Superintendent go into an intense meeting that again involves Liz on a conference call. Regina’s attack is that I orchestrated this. It’s explained that I was fired several times and offered something new. The CEO cuts it down the middle that I work for the Superintendent for 90 days to prove I’m a good apple and then it’s mashed. The Superintendent sidles in that she should be allowed, as the 3rd in charge of the whole agency to make unilateral hiring choices as this whole process sis inefficient and unprofessional. The CEO agrees. She gets her bump officially in power and Regina gets her official slapdown.Hair Length Warning of Impending ReleaseTwo years later Regina has been fired, the Superintendent is on the edge of the knife of Quit-Fired and she tells me it’s her end, my end, of 2 years. I could use my wiles around the company to get a placement elsewhere…but it would come with a Liz-less pay cut.I’m like !deuces! I’d been interviewing and was about to accept a position with Amaranth a hedge fund company in Connecticut. I’d been interviewing a month before this discussion and the constant request for my updated vacation portfolio to count days suggested to me that HR, a department of two harangued women, was counting my days.Also and this is insane Dr. Paul Ekman-Lie To Me-behavioral science microexpression reading: Doreen had a short natural bob, completed her Ph.D. and got a waist-length weave. I knew then, the gig was up.I’m deeply intrigued by education, but not children, maybe adults. I’d actually been volunteer teaching workshops for men down the block…so I’m torn between 3 options.A Corruption Detour of DevelopmentThe Executive Director of that men’s organization makes me promise that when my sojourn at the school is over, I let him know—-hat I give him a shot at me. I tell him and he offers the Title Youth Coordinator—-14 to 25-year-olds plus the Facilitator position. It’s less money but he also offers complete design control over both programs. Interesting….Amaranth wants me to manage 6 lawyers' offices in what I have to admit was a BEAUTIFUL campus in the wilds of Connecticut—-with a fantastic list of holiday parties we would go on. Everyone was slim and pretty and blonde wood paneling.But the men’s non-profit—-it’s a block down from the school and I’d moved to Manhattan at the behest of the school so that an Administrator could be on hand before 7am. I’m situated and I’d be given a lot of educational design freedom.I take the non-profit job, being let go on Monday but having signed the paperwork for the new job that previous Saturday. (Ironically, Amaranth goes under a few months later…)Always, Always Be Professionally Networking-Formally, Informally2 1/2 more years go by and I’ve surmised that the 2nd non-profit is a cesspool of corruption and I’m plotting my escape (I’d even hired a Life Coach) but I’m torn by my commitment to my students and adult participants—-well over 150 people I interact with, counsel and teach a month.However to compensate for low resources I’ve made several informal relationships with half a dozen other non-profits, including Gay Men’s Health Crisis that has a GED program which I push needy youth into. To help out with the push of people I’ve brought them I teach a class or two, then I start helping with administrative duties with the overall program. Finally, the director says that there’s an FT, high paying position to construct an educational/vocational training program, am I interested?I say yes but I interview with the ACLU.My plan had been after the charter school to take a simpler job and finally go to Columbia for my post-grad work. So now I’m really juiced up for the move and sort of finger burned about non-profits.GMHC never calls about the job so I’m about to sign with the ACLU, going back into corporate legal work, when the phone rings—-I was actually walking down the block for lunch on Madison and 125th—-where am I? who the hell do I think I am? What exactly is my problem?My work hours are completely off of a corporate schedule—-I work mid-week through the weekend, off-hours, because sometimes I’m even down at the Piers (the docks, the friggin’ docks until after midnight!—-the jobs I’ve had….) and nite clubs recruiting for my programs—-so uh, no, it takes me a while to catch up on voicemails, especially if the number is blocked. Do you have any idea how many people have my number? It’s better to email me.“By the way, who is this?” I ask.It’s the Asst. HR Director at GMHC, he’s been trying to contact me for two weeks. Do I ever pick up my phone?!!!The Coordinator position was filled, I remind him. Though the CEO and a Director at GMHC had offered me at their Christmas party (my non-profit had no money, remember. Volunteer teaching at GMHC got me into their fabulous parties. I have crashed, been invited to, sidled my way into and eventually volunteered at more places to insure I have holiday parties to go to. It’s sad but it’s one of my few must-haves in life.) either the Coordinator position or a Grants Developer position.It seems that yes a Coordinator was hired. She, however, had quit a week later. Was I still interested? I had to still be interested! Could I be there Thursday, he could assemble two Directors, himself, another person and they’d do a deep, fast interview and explanation of the role?I wanted to stay in education. They were offering a lot more money (I did the best salary negotiation/boondoggle of my life and got 35% more than I’d expected). Plus, most importantly they had resources, knew of my work uptown and in their brother programs and wanted to give me reasonable carte blanche to create as I will. I reasoned that this would be a beautiful evolving culmination to present on a platter to Columbia as I then designed my university teaching aspirations.I accepted. I interviewed Thursday morning and got to work 10 minutes late on Thursday afternoon. The ED, of the corrupt agency, imperiously calls me in and tells me I’m being laid off, Thursday was my last day. Don’t even bother coming in on the weekend. In fact, he’d cash out my next 2 weeks.I say okay with a bright Kool-Aid smile. He’s stymied.(He liked to twist people by their entrails, later, as the Executive Director of GMAD, Gay Men of African Descent he would go on a multi-year bender of embezzlement to buy crystal meth to go to barebacking sex parties to fuck men who weren’t HIV+, with his HIV+-ness. It made the news. Yeah, he was that kind of an asshole.)Two weeks later I come to pick up my last check, it’s just him and the office manager there. He says I can clean up my desk and office and then he’ll give me my check. Under escort from the office manager. This had never happened before in 20 years of the micro agency’s history. The office manager is profusely apologizing to me as we go back to my office. I pick up a magazine and a paperweight. Then turn and get my check. Oh, I’d cleaned off my computer months beforehand and all that paperwork and such on my desk and cabinets was just flotsam.The ED fumes. I can only assume my foresight and chicanery lead to his crystal meth addiction, embezzlement and swapping fluids at unsafe sex parties after decades of steadfast HIV prevention work.Or he was just, you know, an asshole.The corruption and general asshole-ishness of the ED and several other members of the staff meant that I had to play my cards both tight and vicious.I’d spent the past 3 months disintegrating my programs from the inside, referring peopel out, pushing others out of the nest to school, jobs, etc..Friday morning GMHC calls to confirm all my references checked out and the job was mine, starts in 1 week. I technically worked for both agencies in overlapping, double pay weeks.The best part was the old ED came to GMHC to beg for money a few weeks later and passed by my classroom and saw me teaching (though he’d been informed by an in common client I was there.)I Now Have Wolverine Sharpened Senses At Work2 years at GMHC and I go down to the HR office where I was friends with one of the assistant directors. Her office is full of stacks of boxes with white envelopes. And it’s not Christmas. She acts nervous and can’t go to lunch. I mosey away.Those are the lay off letters, I surmise.It was March. I had intended to complete my current class out to April or June and then start at Columbia.I was about to give GMHC notice.But based upon her nervousness and all the envelopes, I wait. I don’t give notice.They deliver our letters in April. However in a stroke of Whoopi!, the Obama Administration, extends healthcare for 2 years from all companies who lay folk off—your benefits won’t end and then he extends Unemployment to 99 weeks if you’re laid off. You can still get it if you go back to school. Essentially it might cost more to keep folk than hold onto them—he’s trying to stave the recession lay off trend.Between savings, extended benefits and maximum amount from Unemployment I literally made MORE than being employed as I started school.If I had quit though as I intended to pre-April, I would’ve got none of this.GMHC delivers our letters, the day AFTER, his announcement. They have to change their payouts. I sign on the dotted line, take the severance package and the years of healthcare and go on vacation then go to Columbia.By that time I’d been through so many non-profit layoffs and firings in a handful of years that I could see it coming a mile away and even more importantly I was always ahead of the curve, never saying anything, but halfway out the door. I’d also lost that kind of blind trust I had in companies so I was aggressively Kyle, Inc. dealing with these companies.But…So What?So it seems like, Ok, Kyle, you bounced through some places, met some folk of questionable morality and sanity but what’s the true profit?Here’s the true profit.No one made me sign a confidentiality agreement or an NDA as I bounced around as was de rigeur when I’d been a Securities Litigation Paralegal beforehand. I was surprised as I was creating all of these new programs and such. But I suggested profit-making, licensing, royalty ideas, once, then went silent.And continued to use all of the positions as test labs and the employees as feedback on things I was developing.(It was actually Mary at the school who suggested one day when I mentioned volunteering at the second non-profit down the block that I write my own books and start a TV show. (Then at the 2nd non-profit, we were filmed by a crew from the studio I work with now and Time Warner. I suggested to the crystal mething ED that we do a show regularly, it was free to set up at the studio and I have youth galore who could manage it. He shut me down. I went and struck up what has been a 10-year contract, with now a 5-year extension, a year later for my own TV show. Because it’s cable the valuation of the shows is less…but there’s still monetized valuation, licensing, rebroadcast profits.))The non-profits, all of them that I’d been systematically laid off from allowed me to experiment with curriculum design school design, creating educational materials, facilitating workshops, aggregating data, etc. for years throughout thousands of people, while paying me.I had suggested several times along this journey to these agencies that books, videos, a TV show could be designed from these interactions with clients, students, agencies, professional developments.They, the leadership, generally balked.When I got to Columbia University I mentioned some of this, they immediately suggested ways—through professors there and agencies—-to publish, produce, distribute my work.That I’ve been able to transmute, transform into millions of dollars of content that will continue to produce and offshoot money for the next 125 years….that I have 100% (Oprah) ownership of!Smooches.#KylePhoenix (the blogs, the books, the briefs, the articles—-monetized)#TheKylePhoenixShow (the TV show, the videos, Live Streaming, etc.)