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Dear AMP community,
After 12 years, my time as an ED of AMP is coming to a close. I am filled with gratitude for having been able to spend the majority of my adult life inside of this organization, shaping it, and being shaped by it. It has been my political home and my creative practice. It has generated some of my deepest learning and most important relationships.
I first attended the Allied Media Conference as a 19 year old baby activist media-maker and I started working for AMP when I was 23. Shortly after turning 30, I became the ED, much to the horror of my 20 year old self who swore it was a job she would never do.
I agreed to become the ED of AMP on the condition that I would practice facilitative leadership—leading in a way that supports the leadership of others. There were political reasons for this, but also practical ones. I could not have led the incredible growth and evolution that has occurred within AMP over the past decade alone. I have leaned upon the vision, wisdom, labor, and love of so many others within this leaderful organization.
These past 12 years have been at different points beautiful and painful, exhausting and exhilarating, lonely and life-affirming. I recognize that this level of intensity comes with the territory of any leadership role. And also too, there were times in which I would not have wished my job upon anyone.
In 2019, when I realized I was ready to stop being an ED, I began the process of shaping the job into something I could pass on to someone else in good conscience. Working with Jenifer Daniels as a Co-ED over the past year was a major part of this journey and I am grateful to her for helping to create the container of shared leadership that can now hold the incoming Co-EDs. I am proud to be leaving the organization at a moment when it is thriving in many ways.
It brings me great joy to transition the leadership of AMP to Mars Marshall and Toni Moceri.
Toni and Mars share a fierce commitment to the people and projects of our network. They are integral nodes within that network, who have earned the trust of many. I know that they will lead AMP with the right mix of vision and care, confidence, and humility. And I also know that they are not alone. They are surrounded by brilliant, dedicated people— on our board, our staff, and within our network as a whole-- who will hold them up, just as they held me.
Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer describes natural systems of reciprocity in which “all flourishing is mutual.” I have received as much from AMP as I have given to it, and in this sense we have flourished together.
The magic of AMP is that this reciprocity exists at the edges of the network, as much as at the center. Whether as AMC attendee, fiscally sponsored project, AMP Seeds presenter, or other role, the network returns to you what you give to it. I am excited for my relationship to AMP to evolve from employee back to participant, contributing nonetheless to the vibrancy of the whole.
I will still be around AMP for at least the next year, in an advisory role, seeing the LOVE Building through to completion and supporting Mars and Toni as needed. Aside from that, you will find me on the dancefloor or the karaoke stage at the AMC afterparties (virtual and physical), spending time with my daughter, reading fiction, and who knows what else.
With endless amounts of love and gratitude,
Jenny
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