What happens when the work becomes more than a job?
In a recent episode of Leadership Story Talks, hosts Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan spoke with Latanya Mapp, a globally recognized strategist, former diplomat, author, and leader whose career has crossed the United Nations, the U.S. Foreign Service, global philanthropy, international NGOs, reproductive justice, and social enterprise.
Latanya has led some of the world’s most influential institutions, including serving as president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Global Fund for Women. She has worked with UNICEF, USAID, Planned Parenthood Global, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and multiple global boards. She is also the author of The Everyday Feminist, a Forbes 50 Over 50 honoree, and a mother of four.
But when Jerome asked the question at the heart of every Leadership Story Talks episode — what is an experience that shaped who you are today? — Latanya did not begin with a title, institution, or achievement.
She began with her first official day of work.
The First Day That Never Left
Latanya had been a Peace Corps volunteer. She had worked with nonprofits. She had done consulting. But her first official job with healthcare and all the structures that come with full-time employment was with UNICEF in Ethiopia.
She had recently had her oldest son and arrived in Addis Ababa as a new mother, still nursing her baby and trying to navigate the practical questions of a new role in a new country. What should she wear? How should she dress appropriately for the culture? What would she do about leaving milk for her baby?
On that first day, she was sent to the center of the country, where months of drought and crop disaster had created a humanitarian crisis. She had been told that, as a child protection officer, UNICEF’s version of a human rights officer, she would be reporting on children and counting children.
The assignment sounded necessary, administrative, and clear enough.
Then she arrived.
At a small medical center, more like a two-room hut, she saw babies and toddlers lined along the wall, covered with white sheets. Officers were tagging them with identifying information about the children and their families. Latanya’s task was to record what was written on those tags.
The work took nearly eleven hours.
She remembers a lunch break in the middle of it and the disorienting thought of how anyone could eat in the face of what they were doing. She also remembers wondering whether refusing the food would seem rude. It was the first time she had ever had to do anything so stark.
For years, she thought of that day as one of the worst things she had ever had to do. Later, she came to understand it differently. She became grateful that she had seen what she was working for, what she was working against, and why the work mattered with such urgency.
The Work Behind the Work
That first day gave Latanya something that stayed with her across every role that followed: a visceral understanding of the consequences of the work.
It is easy, especially inside large organizations, to see administrative roles as removed from the mission. People sit in offices, manage systems, write reports, raise funds, develop strategy, and attend meetings. The work may look far away from the field, far away from patients, children, communities, or the people whose lives depend on what happens next.
But Latanya never forgot that her work existed to prevent what she had seen in that medical center.
She understood that if she did not do not only one hundred percent of her job, but one hundred and fifty percent, the consequences were not abstract. They were human. They had names, families, bodies, and stories.
Jerome reflected on how important it can be for people inside purpose-driven organizations to be reminded why they are there. Even when an organization is built around a mission, people can lose sight of that mission when their everyday work becomes managerial, administrative, or removed from the place where the impact is felt.
Latanya’s story is a reminder that leaders need to help people connect the task in front of them to the human reality behind it.
The Stories Behind the Statistics
Julienne named one of the central themes of the conversation: the stories behind the statistics.
In global development, philanthropy, human rights, and social change work, statistics are everywhere. Reports count the number of lives lost, children reached, dollars moved, services delivered, communities affected, and outcomes measured. Those numbers matter. They help organizations understand scale, advocate for resources, and track progress.
But numbers can also create distance.
Latanya spoke about how easily people can become numb to suffering when it arrives through television, news cycles, films, and endless streams of information. We hear about war in Gaza, Ukraine, a shooting around the corner, an earthquake in Venezuela, or any number of crises, and the scale can become so overwhelming that we turn away or change the channel.
Latanya does not want to become that person. She wants to keep feeling what it means to be in those circumstances, to be the mother of those children, to be the person lifting them from rubble, covering them with a white sheet, or recording their names.
That kind of feeling is not sentimental. It is part of the discipline of leadership. It keeps the work honest.
Shifting Power and Capital
When Jerome asked Latanya to describe the thread connecting her wide-ranging career, she named it clearly: she helps shift power and capital flow.
In practical terms, that means working with foundations, nonprofits, global organizations, academic institutions, and social enterprises to rethink how money moves, who receives it, and how impact is scaled. Her work has often been about redesigning funding models, challenging assumptions, and asking how resources can reach the people closest to the problems.
In The Everyday Feminist, Latanya writes about the people who are doing the work without always having organized structures or large institutions behind them. These are the people feeding communities, educating neighbors, supporting reproductive justice, creating microbusiness opportunities, helping children, organizing locally, and holding communities together.
They may not always be the most visible. They are often not the best funded. But they are frequently the people closest to the solution.
Latanya’s work has been about asking: where can I do something a little differently? Where can I tweak the system so that more people experience the impact we all say we want to see?
That is a leadership question. It is also a power question.
Relationships Before Solutions
Julienne reflected on Latanya’s grounded presence and the way she approaches people person to person. Before advocating, before steering someone toward action, before asking for assistance or support, Latanya educates. She gives context. She offers the backstory of why the work matters and what someone can contribute.
Latanya accepted that description but also named another side of herself: committed, focused, driven, and unwilling to tolerate people who care more about appearances than impact.
Both sides come from the same place.
For Latanya, working with communities means listening to what people say they need, what they want, and what they are willing to do. It means spending time with community leaders, providers, patients, partners, and stakeholders. It means building relationships that last not only months, but decades.
There is joy in that for her: watching someone’s story progress, knowing she was there when an idea began, when funding helped it grow, or when strategy made a wider impact possible.
This is not leadership from a distance. It is leadership through relationship.
The Power We Carry Into the Room
One of the most important leadership lessons in the conversation came from Latanya’s time at Planned Parenthood Global.
She recalled a New York Times article from around 2014, written as a public letter to Planned Parenthood from reproductive justice organizations in the United States, particularly organizations led by Black women. The letter challenged Planned Parenthood for extracting from their work, failing to give credit, and not sharing philanthropic support or the spotlight.
From Planned Parenthood’s perspective, the reaction may have been shocking. The organization likely saw everyone as working toward the same goals. But as Latanya explained, they were not sharing the philanthropic dollars, and they were not sharing visibility.
That moment stayed with her.
It revealed how much damage can happen through assumptions and through the power leaders carry without recognizing it. People may believe their doors are open. They may believe others are free to speak. But culture is not created only through stated invitations. It is communicated through patterns, hierarchies, habits, and who actually feels safe enough to call someone in before calling them out.
Latanya said she would rather have someone text her and say, “I need to talk,” or “I’m not happy,” than have the issue explode publicly later. That requires relationships strong enough to carry honest feedback.
It also requires leaders to be present with stakeholders before there is a crisis.
Walking Around the Block
When asked whether there is one issue that most urgently needs funding or support, Latanya resisted the idea of naming a single global priority. Instead, she returned to place, presence, and responsiveness.
Wherever you find yourself, she said, you have to be able to tackle the issues in front of you.
She described a lesson from Philadelphia: when you move somewhere, you had better walk around the block and say hello to everybody, because you do not actually know what is happening unless you do that.
That image beautifully captures Latanya’s leadership philosophy. Before strategy, walk around the block. Before deciding what matters, meet the people. Before assuming what is needed, listen. What presents itself may be a challenge someone is already working on, and when you come together with that person around that issue, the magic begins.
This has been true across Latanya’s own career. She has moved from democracy, arts, and culture work in Egypt to reproductive justice at Planned Parenthood Global to philanthropy and global women’s leadership. Each role opened a different set of issues. Each required her to enter, listen, learn, and act from where she stood.
The opportunity is not always somewhere else. Sometimes it is directly in front of us.
Discernment and the Loop Back
Jerome brought up a word that had stayed with him from a previous conversation with Latanya: discernment.
After stepping away from traditional leadership roles, Latanya joined a fellowship at the University of Chicago’s Leadership and Society Initiative, a cohort of leaders who had left major organizations and were asking what came next. The group even made a T-shirt that said, “I need time for discernment.”
For Latanya, discernment was not simply a pause. It was an opportunity to ask deeper questions. What is happening in the world? What should we be working on? Where do we have a particular advantage? How can we support our communities not as the head of an institution, but as someone who wants to help?
On the first day of the fellowship, participants were asked, “Who are you?” Latanya wrote that she was someone who had spent a lifetime moving between worlds, growing up with a deep sense of justice and then working inside some of the most powerful institutions in the world, from diplomacy to global philanthropy.
She also wrote about the pattern she had come to see: the people closest to the problems, those holding communities together and driving real change, were almost always the last seen and least funded.
When she later reread what she had written, she realized the answer had already been there. The discernment process had brought her back to what she already knew.
Jerome compared this to the sculptor Giacometti, who would begin with a thin form, add material until it grew large, and then chisel away until it became thin again. The form had changed through the process, but it had also returned to something essential.
Discernment can work that way. We add roles, institutions, titles, responsibilities, and achievements. Then, with enough time and attention, we begin to chisel back toward the core.
Who Are You Without the Resume?
One of the gifts of Latanya’s story is the way it challenges the shortcut answer to the question “Who are you?”
We often respond with a résumé. We name jobs, organizations, accomplishments, credentials, and roles. Those things may be true, but they are not the whole answer.
The deeper answer often lives in the moments that changed us. The day that never left. The people we could not forget. The injustice that kept calling us back. The pattern we noticed across years of work. The communities that taught us what leadership really requires.
Latanya’s answer is not only that she has led major institutions. It is that she has spent a lifetime moving between worlds in order to shift power and capital toward the people closest to the work.
That is a story of leadership. It is also a story of identity.
Doing What Is Closest to Your Heart
Toward the end of the conversation, Latanya spoke about her book The Everyday Feminist and the women whose work continues to inspire her. She also shared the work she is now doing through Culture Seekers, the consulting company she and her husband founded to help nonprofits and small to medium enterprises remain stable during a time of challenge and transition.
For Latanya, these organizations are the backbone of communities, not only in the United States but around the world. If mission-oriented, community-focused, impact-driven organizations are not strong, then politics can become the only ground people have to stand on.
Her work now is about strategy, fundraising, capital flows, and helping organizations stay steady enough to serve.
And the message she left with listeners was simple and profound: in moments of crisis, do what is closest to your heart and closest to your abilities.
That does not mean doing everything. It does not mean solving every crisis at once. It means paying attention to where you are, what you know, who is in front of you, and what your skills make possible.
The Invitation to Show Up
Latanya Mapp’s story is a reminder that leadership is not only about being in charge. It is about being connected to the consequences of the work. It is about remembering the people behind the data, the communities behind the mission, and the everyday feminists, organizers, providers, caregivers, and leaders who often remain unseen and underfunded.
It is also about humility. Walk around the block. Listen before assuming. Build relationships before crisis. Know the power you carry into the room. Let people call you in. And when you are not sure what comes next, take the time for discernment.
The work becomes more than a job when we understand what is at stake.
And when the world feels overwhelming, Latanya offers a place to begin: do what is closest to your heart, and closest to your abilities.
LISTEN to Latanya’s episode HERE
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