I had the opportunity to meet Heather McLeod Grant last week while speaking on a panel for Stanford’s  Career Re-Entry Program.  Heather has recently co-authored a book on Nonprofits called,  Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High Impact Nonprofits.  Here’s her story.

Heather McLeod Grant is an Advisor to the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and to leading nonprofits and foundations.  She has lectured at Stanford, and presented at industry conferences on social entrepreneurship, nonprofit leadership, youth engagement, and strategic philanthropy. She has been published in the New York Times, Inc., the American Prospect, and Alliance, and has appeared on CNN and NPR. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and an AB from Harvard University, and resides in the Bay Area with her husband and daughter.

What did you do before you wrote the book?  I was consulting to nonprofits and foundations in the Bay Area, including the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. I’ve spent most of my career in the social sector – now approaching 15 years!  But, I also have my MBA and spent 2 years at McKinsey consulting to for-profit companies. All of which has given me great tools and skills that I now use in my work with mission-driven organizations.

How did you OnRamp into becoming an author?  Leslie Crutchfield , a friend and colleague, with whom I’d started a magazine (Who Cares, a national magazine for young social entrepreneurs and activists published from 1993-1999.also about nonprofits!) before business school reached out to discuss the idea of writing a book like Good to Great for the social sector. We’d had this on-going friendship and partnership on two other ventures, and shared a passion for figuring out what makes great nonprofits great. So it seemed like a no-brainer that I’d team up with her to write this book. She also has had two young children in the course of this project, and I have a daughter who is almost four – so working with another mother who “gets it” was really terrific. We understood each other’s needs for flexibility and could cover if the other had a pressing family obligation. I can’t imagine having written a book with anyone who didn’t understand my personal situation at the time.

Does being an author and consultant give you the flexibility you need to balance your family life?  Absolutely – that’s the reason I’ve chosen this path at this juncture in my career. I’ve really been my own boss for the past 4 years. I take on the projects I want to work on (with clients), and Leslie and I have been able to control our schedules around the book project. Though it has been intense at times, it is highly flexible. The first two years after my daughter was born, I was able to work 3-4 days per week, and still have time to do things with her like parent co-op nursery school, play-groups, etc. It was really important to me that I spent that time with her when she was young. I went back to work full-time when she was 3, and in pre-school. The last year has been the most intense with writing the book and now launching it – but even now I don’t have to be in an office 9-5, and I can control my own schedule.