Illness forces Ferrell-Jones to resign as head of Boston’s YWCA
Read this article on The Boston Globe’s website.
By Jon Chesto, Staff, The Boston Globe
YW Boston chief executive Sylvia Ferrell-Jones, one of the city’s best-known nonprofit leaders, has stepped down from her job to focus on her fight with cancer.
Mim Minichiello, chair of YW Boston’s board of directors, said the organization’s 25-person staff was informed of her departure earlier this week.
“There was quite a bit of crying,” Minichiello said. “It was a difficult decision for all of us. . . . This is the passion of her life, the YW mission.”
Ferrell-Jones, 60, is one of Boston’s most prominent black female executives.
She has run the organization — whose legal name is the Young Women’s Christian Association of Boston — for a decade and is credited with bringing the group back from financial difficulties while expanding its community programming. The organization, also known as the YWCA, runs programs aimed at reducing gender and racial disparities.
Ferrell-Jones, a New Jersey native, previously held management jobs in Boston at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and AEW Capital Management, a real estate firm.
Beth Chandler, YW Boston’s chief operating officer, has taken over as interim chief executive. Minichiello said she expects board members will start talking about how to formally hire a new chief executive in the coming weeks.
Minichiello said she has been inspired by the way Ferrell-Jones has quietly fought cancer for more than two years while running YW Boston.
“I’m changed forever, watching how she handled everything,” Minichiello said. “If we’re fighters by nature, which Sylvia is, you’re punching back. She’s been swinging away for two and a half years.”
Rebecca Lee, a real estate partner at Boston law firm Mintz Levin, said Ferrell-Jones’s influence has gone well beyond her work at YW Boston. The two have been friends since 1999, when they participated in the LeadBoston executive leadership program, which YW Boston now oversees.
“Sylvia has always been a quiet but very forceful leader with a vision for a better Boston,” Lee said. “She’s been a role model for . . . many women, especially women of color. Her stepping down will be a great loss for the business and nonprofit communities.”