Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Chris Whitford of Avail NYC Is Helping To Change Our World

Realize you replicate your weaknesses into the organization as much as your strengths. Surround yourself with people who are better than you at many things, then trust them and empower them. Leadership is not being the best person at everything in the room. Leadership is attracting the best talent you can find and resourcing them to succeed. There’s nothing so satisfying as seeing people thrive in their abilities and bring value to the mission.

As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Whitford, CEO of Avail NYC.

Chris Whitford is the CEO and a Founding Member of Avail NYC, a non-profit which has served New York and beyond for 27 years. Chris’ recent speaking engagements include giving a 2023 THINQ Culture Summit talk in Nashville, TN (Caring for Three Lives), speaking at the 2022 Praxis Summit in Napa, CA, a venture-building ecosystem for non-profit leaders motivated by their faith to address the major issues of our time, and speaking at Lead.NYC’s Movement Day initiative in NYC. Chris graduated from Brown University, has held leadership roles within Columbia University’s Christian Union and currently serves on the President’s Council for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Chris and her husband are members of Redeemer Lincoln Square and long-time residents of the Upper West Side of Manhattan where they live with their beloved dog, Francie.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

What if I told you it was being a ballerina? I know that sounds strange, but for me ballet and nonprofit work are connected by the same thread. I have always tended to gravitate toward doing hard things and imagining “the way things ought to be.” From a young age, I felt the draw to beauty, and ballet was an expression of the beautiful. I wanted to be a ballet dancer from the age of 4, which led me to study Art History at Brown, and further ignited the feeling that the way things ought to be is beautiful. The same ineffable draw to beauty also led me to nonprofit work as an adult. I think all social entrepreneurs are after the beautiful — we see a need; we want to meet it, and we want to do it in the most human centered, lofty, ideal way possible. Some may call this hopelessly altruistic or crazy, but I believe it takes great risk and sacrifice to accomplish something meaningful, and we’re all after a meaningful life, right?

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?

The most interesting story is the story that happens all the time at Avail — to staff, volunteers, Board, clients, partners, investors, or community members. I never tire of it. It’s the surprising realization — sometimes outright shock — that an organization like Avail exists and we get to be a part of it. In the midst of cacophonous political polemics there really does exist an organization that keeps people at the heart of their story and advocates for them as they seek to make healthy decisions about their unexpected pregnancy, find solutions to their challenges, and engage the community support they are looking for. People always start out skeptical, and I get the front row seat to people saying, “I cannot believe you exist!”

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Ah! Well, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a funny CEO mistake! Even the smallest things are usually pretty costly for all the people you lead, but…I’ve got one. I got on the phone with an investor whom I thought was one person, but wasn’t. I had written down the wrong name with the wrong phone number. What made the whole thing funny was that right from the get go I thought, “This does not sound at all like x.” Huh, so I asked a whole bunch of open questions to test my gut despite my notes, and the problem was that the answers were quite plausibly a match. Determined not to make a complete idiot of myself and insult an important partner, I reverse-searched the phone number on Salesforce, and in fact discovered my gut was right. I had called the wrong number, but the real person on the other end of the phone happened to be in the same small community, so I understood right away why my detective work wasn’t so clever after all. Fast, I had to come up with a genuine reason for the call and get off the phone! What did I learn? Slow down; details matter!

Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?

Pregnancy is not a problem, but an unexpected pregnancy is never simple. Many people’s lives are impacted, and others often haunt the people experiencing the pregnancy, making them feel even more fear. Others could be a vocal presence or just a felt presence; either way, they often emanate powerful thoughts, feelings and expectations which make the people in the situation feel trapped and out of touch with what they want. When people find Avail and choose to access the full spectrum of our services, whole families and even communities are impacted. Many more people than the woman, man, and child flourish. Avail is constantly finding ways to adapt and resolve the problems our community is facing. One incredible example of this happened during COVID. We knew that many of the families in our community worked service jobs, which evaporated overnight. We began a whole new program to provide direct financial aid to resolve needs, something we had never done before.

I want to invite you to meet one of our amazing clients. I’ll call her Shayla to protect her confidentiality.

After taking a pregnancy test, Shayla found no support from family or friends. Searching for help, she found Avail. Shayla was matched with an Avail personal advocate, and she told us in retrospect, “I didn’t feel supported until I found Avail. I will never forget my advocate. She was the first person to congratulate me on my pregnancy and the only person who didn’t make me feel like I was making the wrong decision. Through Avail, I felt like I was getting the support I needed at that time.”

We supported Shayla as she made her decisions about how to move forward. When she decided to parent, she chose to access Avail’s parenting resources. When COVID hit, Shayla was one of the first people to receive direct aid for rent relief from Avail to sustain her through the pandemic. Her mom, who struggles with trusting people because of her own experience, shared with Shayla, “Seeing how Avail cared for you has restored my faith in people being good.”

Every week Shayla would attend parenting classes, for which she was grateful, because she told us, “No one else was offering what Avail was offering.” This year, through our Lend-a-Hand program, she received a grant to subsidize daycare expenses for her two twins who are now toddlers while she is able to work.

We received an update from her, sharing that she recently had graduated from a job training program Avail set her up with and found a well paying job. “The twins really love school… they’re always walking ahead of me and go up to their classroom, and are very happy and healthy. I hope I can meet everyone who helps us one day.” Reflecting on her experience, Shayla shared, “What if I never got Avail’s number? My life would have been very different. They have been here the whole way.”

Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?

Whether or not people will recommend us to their friends is our main measure of success because it means that not only has the person benefited from Avail, but they trust us so much that they would entrust the most important people in their lives to us — friends and family who might need or want Avail’s services. Our client net promoter score is 99 — that’s on a scale from -100 to 100. Anything over 60 is considered superb. We’re very proud of that because it represents people’s lives which have been positively impacted in very meaningful ways. Then there’s the regular feedback we get — “I feel safe and comfortable at Avail.” “I felt heard and seen in my darkest hour. I got support to help me work on myself to get better. That woman is absolutely phenomenal.” “I finally felt like a person.” “I felt heard and supported.” “I can’t believe the space she held for me in just meeting me over zoom. I felt heard and seen in every way and she said the exact thing to make me feel strong in myself and like I can move through this.” “It’s a lifeline.” “They offer resources that can be useful for people who are in relationships and not in a relationship. “Everyone was so nice. I didn’t feel judged.” “He was amazing and I feel like a 10 isn’t enough.”

Avail’s hospitality and individual advocacy are our hallmarks.

Mary* came to Avail after having an abortion and needed someone to simply vent to. Mary was living with her boyfriend who did not provide any emotional support and she told her advocate that she felt alone and rejected during the entire process of terminating her pregnancy. Mary reported that her boyfriend was often abusive and had made her reliant on him — taking away the ability for her to have a job and support her and her daughter*. Mary felt as if she was living in a dark tunnel with no the light at the end.

Mary found Avail and began speaking with a client advocate. Mary was able to find someone that would simply listen to her and care about the obstacles that she was facing in her life. With the encouragement from Avail, Mary found her own housing, began working for a school, and was empowered to focus on her healing. A year later, she is able to provide a stable and loving environment for her and her daughter.

Mary shared that, if she never took the chance to connect with a client advocate, she believes that she may not be here today. Now she knows that she has a support system that is on her side, cheering her on, and helping find the right resources and doors for her along the way.

Are there three things the community can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?

1. Conversations about abortion and unexpected pregnancy are never academic or just political. They are always personal. The statistics are unequivocal. We’ve all been touched by it- either in our own story or in a friend or family’s. So, these conversations are hard and must be characterized by kindness, love, understanding, and humility. Remember, the odds are you’re talking with someone with a personal experience with an unexpected pregnancy, or someone is overhearing you who has a story, or the person in front of you may one day be in their own story. If you uncharitably argue a side as if it’s all simple, that will create a trust gap between you and the person experiencing the pregnancy. Research Avail conducted showed that those with strong political or moral stances disconnected from the deeply personal reality of what it’s like to be unexpectedly pregnant are not the people those processing a pregnancy will turn to for help, even if you’re their best friend. If you want to support someone, there’s no substitute for empathy.
2. Recognize that doing what’s beneficial for others always involves listening, being willing to consider personal blind spots, and acknowledging that life is complex. It requires putting ourselves in another’s shoes and considering realities that don’t fit our own assumptions.
3. People will always be at the heart of bringing hope, resilience, and real solutions to the challenges people face. You are a member of a community that needs you. Won’t you be the one person who responds with safety and kindness to your own neighbors?

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

A leader is a person with a particular vision of a preferred future for an entity (club, organization, business, family, committee, institution, movement) who works to catalyze, equip, and deploy others to bring that vision to reality along a clear path of strategic priorities and with a self-sustaining momentum so that the entity outlasts her. To do this, a leader has a distinct relationship with reality, power, authority, and self. The leader defines reality for others in such a way that others see what they did not see before and are equipped to do their job in light of reality. The leader has power in order to benefit the mission and others. Authority for a leader does not come from herself but comes from outside herself. She has authority because of her role given to her by others, not from her own personhood; however, a sober assessment and knowledge of oneself creates integrity between the authority of the role and authority the leader merits. This agreement elicits trust from the organization because of her humility and competence and the organization flourishes.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why.

1. Learn to recognize and trust your best instincts. I took advice a couple of times when my instinct said to follow another path. I learned that I was right. I now can recognize so much better when a strong instinct is not reactionary but in fact trustworthy.
2. Your character matters because you will be making fast, numerous, high stakes decisions every day under a lot of pressure, and character formed by years of development will be the ground out of which those decisions come. Good character leads to wisdom; bad character to foolishness. Good decisions don’t always come from long deliberation. I had no idea just how fast and frequently I would have to make really critical decisions. Confidence doesn’t necessarily come with time.
3. All the things that seem to have nothing to do with your leadership are in fact very important. Face the hard things in your life right now; you’ll look back on them and see how you’ve learned to spot patterns. I may not have faced these exact challenges before, but I had the stamina and strength to stay the course when things were dark because I recognized the contours of the hard times.
4. Seasoned entrepreneurs know to get used to the pit in your stomach that risk creates. That’s what leadership feels like. I thought good decisions would always bring some level of peace. I saved myself a lot of grief by realizing pursuing strategy means risk; risk means possibility of failure, but anything less than pursuing a strategy is not leadership but management. Get used to the pit.
5. Realize you replicate your weaknesses into the organization as much as your strengths. Surround yourself with people who are better than you at many things, then trust them and empower them. Leadership is not being the best person at everything in the room. Leadership is attracting the best talent you can find and resourcing them to succeed. There’s nothing so satisfying as seeing people thrive in their abilities and bring value to the mission.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I dream of a day when people are not wrapped in isolation and distrust, but in safe communities where they belong — the day when our nation has embraced a counter-cultural, positive, person-centered movement of neighbors and networks who are transforming their communities into welcoming havens of support so that every person facing an unexpected pregnancy can flourish.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

If your critics are wrong about 99% of what they say, listen, own your 1%, and change. Every mission has detractors, naysayers, opponents, and competitors. At the heart of their criticism is often a nugget of wisdom or a mirror reflecting truth I can’t see. It’s a gift to face those things and be better.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I would love to meet Cheryl Bachelder, former Chairman and CEO of Popeyes® Louisiana Kitchen, Inc. She drove exceptional results from a culture of servant leadership, satisfying both customers and the bottom line. I would like to ask her about her ideas on practices to translate that to the nonprofit world to satisfy investors and beneficiaries as equal stakeholders in the mission.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can learn more about Avail NYC at www.avail.contact.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success in your important work!