When Indira Henard became executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center in 2016, the nation’s oldest center was on life support.
The board made it clear it was hiring her to save the organization, where several leadership changes, mounting debt, funding woes and a headquarters in need of renovation were hamstringing it from doing the daunting work of ending sexual violence and providing support for those who’ve been affected by it.
At the time a deputy director at the center, Henard knew it wasn’t going to be easy. She’d been volunteering there, working on the hotline and in hospitals, since moving to D.C. to work in then-Sen. Barack Obama’s Capitol Hill office. She fell in love with the D.C. Rape Crisis Center’s work.
“Instead of taking the yellow brick road down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, I made the best decision of my life yet,” Henard says. ”This work is my purpose.”
Her decision, as she puts it, to “say yes to the mess” and take the…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
