Most Important Skills for a Director Strategic Partnerships at United Way of Greater Los Angeles
Oxana, a Director of Strategic Partnerships, highlights communication and empathy as crucial skills, emphasizing the need to "relay in a resonant way the amazing work" of United Way to external partners while internally ensuring alignment. The ability to understand partner goals and constraints through "systems thinking and individual one-on-one connections" is key to forging effective, mutually beneficial partnerships.
Communication, Empathy, Strategic Thinking, Relationship Building, Project Management
Advizer Information
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Oxana Ermolova
Director, Strategic Partnerships
United Way of Greater Los Angeles
UC Santa Barbara
UCLA School of Management, Full-time MBA
Entertainment, Music & Arts, International Relations & Affairs
Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Sales and Client Management
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Immigrant
Video Highlights
1. Effective communication is crucial for relaying information to partners and internal teams.
2. Empathy is essential for understanding partner goals, constraints, and objectives to create effective strategic plans.
3. Systems thinking and creativity are needed to align shared objectives and develop innovative partnerships that yield greater results than individual efforts alone.
Transcript
What skills are most important for a job like yours?
The most important qualities, I would say, are communication and empathy. Communication is crucial because we serve as external representatives of the organization.
It's our job to clearly and resonantly relay the amazing work our program team is leading to partners. These partners may not have the same level of expertise or insight into the specific issue areas we're working on.
Internally, I need to communicate effectively with our programs team, finance team, and senior leadership. This ensures we're all working towards the same goal.
Empathy is important because I need to understand partner goals through systems thinking and individual connections. I need to know what they hope to achieve, their constraints, and the objectives of our partnership.
This allows me to carve out a strategic partnership plan that advances shared objectives. It's about aligning those objectives, finding the fit, and being creative in how we think about partnering. We aim to create something larger than the sum of its parts.