Last Thursday, Russell Philanthropies Co-President and Barnard alum Marcia Sells gave a talk in the LeFrak Theater as a Distinguished Guest for the Beyond Barnard Nonprofit Focus Series.

On Thursday, February 19, Marcia Sells (BC ‘81) joined Vice President of Community Engagement and Lifelong Success A-J Aronstein for a fireside chat in the LeFrak Theater as part of Beyond Barnard’s Nonprofit Focus Series. Sells discussed her decades-long career in the nonprofit sphere, where she has held a diverse array of roles at organizations ranging from the NBA to the Metropolitan Opera. After recalling her time at Barnard and her early post-graduate career, Sells provided her perspective on how the nonprofit world has changed since she first entered it, what experiences students looking to pursue a career in the nonprofit sector should look for, and how to balance passion with financial and personal well-being. 

After opening remarks from Barnard President Laura Rosenbury, Aronstein began the conversation by asking Sells to recall the transition process from Barnard to her early career. Sells began her first year at Barnard in spring of 1978 after training as a ballerina at the Dance Theater of Harlem. She described her journey to Barnard as a long one, but when she finally arrived there, she became deeply involved in student life, serving as SGA president and chair of Barnard Organization of Soul and Solidarity (BOSS; then known as the Barnard Organization of Black Women). These experiences and others informed her decision to attend Columbia Law School directly after graduating from Barnard in 1981, at which she would later serve as Dean of Students. Although she reminisced fondly about living at 601 W. 110th St. before it was Barnard housing (“There were lots of great parties there”), she also acknowledged that law school was a “hard and challenging” experience.

As the conversation shifted towards her career in the nonprofit sphere, Sells shared an insight which would become a running theme throughout the talk: “There’s a very wide range of not-for-profits.” People don’t often realize, she said, how many organizations and institutions fall under the nonprofit umbrella. In her experience—working in everything from law, to academia, to sports—the challenge of nonprofit work is often a challenge of balancing passion with financial and personal well-being. She recalled this challenge most vividly when discussing her work on sexual assault and child abuse cases as an Assistant District Attorney.

“You need to take a break. You’ve now done five trials,” she said of being required to take a certain amount of time off between cases. “It wasn’t about needing to use your PTO, but about the work itself […] You need to be rested so you can come back and take on this case. That was a valuable thing.”

Being able to sustain yourself in the nonprofit sphere is not only a challenge of balancing passion with well-being, but also of balancing passion with skill: “Finding that passion and drive is important, but [so is] having the skills and the talents and the ability to think through how you’re going to resolve issues for the people you’re working with.” To this point, she highlighted the benefit of liberal arts curriculums like that of Barnard: “That’s the beauty of the liberal arts education, because you do have that opportunity to work in lots of different things and take different classes.” 

The second half of the hour-long talk was given over to an audience Q&A. In response to a question about her experience working in academia, she recounted the story of how she was asked to become Dean of Students at Columbia Law School in 1991. “It was honestly based on all the things I complained about when I was student,” she joked about her approach to the role. “What are the things you need as a law student? We didn’t have RAs […] Even when you’re in a graduate program, there are times when something goes wrong.” 

The skill of being able to consider the needs of others beyond what’s obvious is an important one in the nonprofit sphere, and it came up again when Sells was asked to talk about how college prepared her for her career. “I don’t put [my time at dance school] on my resume,” she said, “although now that I’m older, the idea of being able to work in a group is important.”

She asserted that all experiences, no matter how menial or unrelated to one’s desired career path they may seem, help you build up a skillset. “Scheduling, canceling—all of those things help build skills,” she said, recalling her time working at the check-in desk of an OB-GYN’s office and at the student activities office in college. “If someone comes in and they’re not happy with something that happened with their club or activity, how do you talk to them? How do you deal with that situation?” Her wide array of working experiences, and especially her experiences in local government, taught her that, “‘I want to help people’ may be a mindset, but it isn’t a skill set.” 

At this point, Aronstein commented that, in his work at Beyond Barnard, he often hears from students that they don’t feel their majors qualify them to work at certain nonprofit organizations: “I’m not a Women’s Gender, and Sexuality studies major, so how can I work at Planned Parenthood?” Sells once again affirmed that experience and skill can be just as important as specialized coursework. Discussing her senior thesis, she says that “doing that research and that work, and what it takes to do that, gave [her] a lot of information and experience” which she was able to translate into action in her career, regardless of how related her thesis topic was to the organizations she worked at. 

Following an audience question about Sells’ experience working for sports nonprofits, the conversation turned to networking. “At a certain point in your career, you will have acquired a lot of different experiences and had the opportunity to meet a lot of different people,” Sells said of her chance meeting with former NBA Commissioner David Stern at the 1996 Columbia Law School graduation ceremony, at which Stern was the speaker. “There aren’t many times where someone will literally say, ‘Here, I have a job for you.’” Sells said she “honestly didn’t realize how big” the network she built up during her time as Vice President of Organizational Development for the NBA was, but that it paid dividends when it came to her role as Co-President at Russell Philanthropies: “Knowing them, talking to them, and reconnecting was important.”

The last audience question of the night gave Sells the opportunity to circle back to her remark about the vastness of the nonprofit world. How, given the staggering range of organizations under the nonprofit umbrella, do you figure out where you fit? Once again drawing on her experiences in both academia and law, Sells described how the size of an organization can impact your ability to explore different avenues. At a large university, for example, “You can start off in admissions, and start thinking, ‘God, that might not be for me’ […] You can find the place that really works for you.” 

The question those considering a career in the nonprofit sphere should ask themselves, Sells said, is “What are the things you want to experience to get the job you want to have?” She also reiterated her earlier point about considering financial well-being in the decision-making process: “I can offer [a nonprofit] a lot of information—I can’t just do it for free.” 

Aronstein ended the talk by asking Sells to give a 30-second pitch for a career in the nonprofit world. Her closing words once again emphasized the diversity of opportunities a career in nonprofits can provide: “If what you want to do is have a lot of responsibility early on in your career, nonprofits are where that’s going to happen […] If you’re at a comfort level with taking up that level of responsibility, this is the kind of position for you, particularly if passion and skill meet.” 

This talk was part of Beyond Barnard’s Focus Series, a semester-long workshop series providing students with insight into careers in arts, finance, consulting, tech, law, and nonprofits. The next event, Tech Focus: Rakuten International, will be held at 12 pm on February 28 in Elliott Hall.

Marcia Sells via Barnard