Transmission Ministry Collective is excited to announce its nation-wide search for a co-Executive Director!
When TMC was founded in 2020, our first board, alongside founder and Executive Director Austen Hartke, intentionally built in structures that would ensure a diversity of leadership perspectives. This included limiting the term of the Executive Director role to no more than 5 years. With Austen in the fourth year of his time in that role, we have now begun the process of leadership transition.
As part of this process, TMC will be shifting from having one Executive Director to two Co-Executive Directors, allowing greater specialization by, and support for, the leadership team. This division of labor also moves TMC away from the usual hierarchical model of nonprofit leadership into a more horizontal and egalitarian model, as we continue to live deeper into our identity as a collective and our commitment to community-based decision-making.
“I was blessed to have some really wise conversation partners who guided me through the early stages of forming TMC,” Austen noted, “and as a result I realized that leadership in our community needed to be shared, rather than kept by one individual forever. That’s how we’ve talked about leadership ever since, and it allows us to embody our commitments to rest, mutuality, and accountability. I feel thankful to be able to hand one piece of leadership on to someone whose insight and judgment I trust so completely.”
Micah Melody Taberner, currently our Community Care Coordinator, will be stepping into one of these new Co-Executive Director roles as Director of Community Engagement. She has been instrumental in shaping TMC’s programs and community culture since she started with the organization in its infancy, and her demonstrated success with community building, pastoral care, creative problem solving, collaboration, and strategic planning have helped make TMC the thriving community it is today. Austen and the TMC Board of Directors are confident in Micah Melody’s vision and leadership, and could not be more excited to see where she takes TMC next.
“I am so grateful to be part of a community that values shared leadership,” Micah Melody shared, “and I am committed to continue leading TMC into truly embodying our identity as a collective. TMC has been an instrumental support in my own journey as a transgender Christian woman and I am honored to help lead this organization. I am incredibly excited to see how our community grows!”
We have also opened the search for a qualified candidate for our second executive position as the Director of Operations. Our search committee is composed of people representing many levels of our organization, including Board members, members of our Leadership Cohort, representatives from our Trans People of Color Task Force, and more.
The search committee will be accepting applications and interviewing candidates throughout the next several months, with the hope of completing the leadership transition later this Fall. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are especially encouraged to apply. We are also working to actively compensate for accessibility barriers in the application process resulting from racial capitalism. The full job posting can be found here.
