Leading The Way: Shari Roeseler
It’s so important to pause. To let a potential decision sit for at least 24 hours …
On Friday, March 13, 2020, Society for the Blind executive director Shari Roeseler watched as an initial wave of businesses and nonprofits began announcing plans to shut down temporarily. Over the weekend, she held an online meeting with her leadership team. Together, they decided that for the safety of their employees, Society needed to stop offering in-person services. On Sunday, Shari let the entire staff know that they needed to begin working from home as soon as possible.
The next morning, Society’s staff met in teams by program and gathered the materials and equipment they needed. By Monday afternoon, everyone was working at home and busy reaching out to clients to update them. Within 48 hours, all of Society’s core programs were available online and within two weeks, the staff were facilitating support groups and running the after-school academy virtually.
How were you able to pivot so quickly?
I immediately engaged my leadership team so we were working together from the beginning, comparing notes on what we thought was happening and how best to deal with it. Because half of my staff are blind or have low-vision, we use a lot of technology already which made the shift that much more fluid.
Are all of Society’s programs and services available online?
We couldn’t serve most of our senior population online because many of them do not use or do not have access to technology. We also have a low-vision clinic that we had to close temporarily because of the restrictions. The program staff called all of our low-vision clinic patients and senior program clients going back at least two years, just to do a welfare check. This enabled us to connect people to resources and to find out who was isolated, who needed food, who had access to technology, who could participate in online training, etc. Our low-vision clinic got a lot of orders for low-vision equipment that needed to be shipped to people sheltering at home so they were bustling in March and April.
Were you able to keep all of your staff employed and engaged because of the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan you received?
When Governor Newsom issued the shelter in place order, PPP loans weren’t even on the horizon. I just felt strongly that we needed to keep our teaching programs going and to check on our patients and clients since we could no longer meet with them in person. We needed to know how they were, what kind of help they needed and what they needed from us. With the support of my board, I made the decision to keep all my employees through April. Fortunately, we received a PPP loan on April 10th.
What made you decide to pivot the way you did?
It was clear to me and the leadership team that we needed to stay in close contact with our clients and continue teaching in whatever way we could. We focused on mission first. The financial pieces weren’t initially clear, but we did a cash flow analysis just after we closed the office and began developing scenarios based on what we thought might happen. Within a week, the state Department of Rehabilitation approved remote teaching but we made the shift online without knowing if we were going to continue receiving reimbursements for all classes taught remotely. We just knew we needed to be sure students could continue getting access to blindness skills training. The state also allowed us to take on new senior clients without mandating that the paperwork be signed up front which enabled us to reach even more people.
As the state begins to reopen, are there any programs or services you plan to continue online?
Absolutely! We’ve learned a lot from our experience and plan to continue offering online training and services going forward. A number of our clients have comorbidities which make it difficult for them to travel. If they’re on dialysis, for example, they might be too tired to come to class. But over the past few months, we’ve seen a marked increase in attendance. Our clients made comments like: “I really wasn’t feeling well, and if I’d had to get on para-transit or light rail, I probably wouldn’t have come to class today. But because I don’t have to leave the house, I’m in class today.”
Are you planning to change any existing programs because of the COVID-19 restrictions?
In our low-vision clinic, evaluations generally take an hour and a half. We’re now testing a combined telemedicine and in-person patient visit. The telemedicine portion will gather basic information about patients’ health history and what they’re experiencing. Then, when patients come into the clinic, their appointments will only need to be 30-45 minutes which reduces the amount of time they’ll need to be in the building.
Why do you think you didn’t make mistakes when you pivoted?
Because I didn’t make any decisions in isolation. I involved my board and my leadership team. I kept them informed, even when the news wasn’t good. Before our PPP loan came through, we had to have difficult conversations about what programs and services would have to be cut and which staff members might have to be furloughed. The leadership team was free to offer ideas and propose alternatives, and we discussed everything together. It can be really easy to forget to ask for input when you’ve got the weight of all this on your shoulders but, in fact, you want more input during a time like this, not less. I may be the one who has to make the hard decisions ultimately, but they are made with transparency and only after I have discussed them with my leadership team and my board.
What has surprised you?
The speed and smoothness of the transition. Actually, I’m not really surprised as my staff are just amazing people, and we are together on all of this. The crisis confirmed everything I thought about them and their commitment to our clients.
You hear all these adages about how life can turn on a dime despite all the planning in the world. We’re seeing that come to life right now. It’s been a time of realizing how quickly everything can change and how different our world is right now.
What have you learned so far?
–That it’s important to be nimble and flexible but you have to be thoughtful at the same time.
–How important it is to pause. To let a potential decision sit for at least 24 hours. Most decisions don’t have to be made right away. Pausing is what kept us from taking actions like furloughing people and then having to call them back to work a few weeks later, once the PPP loan was approved. It’s demoralizing to the person being furloughed and damaging to team morale.
–Don’t wait for other people to solve your problems.
–Get your board involved right away. You need their advice and perspective. I’m blessed to have an incredible smart board, an engaged board, a caring board, and it’s made a huge difference to be able to draw on all that expertise. As soon as I emailed the board that we were closing in-person services, my finance chair said, “Let’s do a cash analysis right now.” So, within days we had a worse-case scenario through August. Now, three months later, our current cash analysis is night and day from the original one, but preparing the initial analysis kept us from making big mistakes that might not have played out well.
–It’s important to be proactive. As soon as the PPP loans were announced, we started working with our board member from the bank where we got our loan. She walked us through the whole process. We had our loan secured by April 10th, and that set us up on a positive course.
–Consider more than one scenario. We created three to four scenarios about what the future might look like. Some of them are kind of doomsdayish, but it’s important to play it all out so you don’t get surprised. And if you realize the worst one is coming, you’ll have already done some thinking about it. There are still a lot of unknowns, and this crisis isn’t over yet.
Shari Roeseler is the executive director of Society For The Blind which provides education and services to people who are low-vision and blind in 27 county region. Prior to joining Society, Shari was the executive director of St. Anthony Foundation, one of the largest nonprofit social service agencies in San Francisco with a staff of 130 people and an annual budget of $15 million. Shari holds a B.A. in Social Work, Sociology & Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Masters in Ethics/Bio-Ethics from Santa Clara University-Jesuit School of Theology.