I did not expect to be sad about it.
It was the last call of a seven-month expedition aptly called Women Emerging Expedition for Philanthropists. There was a full agenda: three groups presenting what they had found, recommendations on carrying the insights further, a finale prepared specially for the close. I was due to present on one of those topics and had collaborated with three other Explorers beforehand. As I was dialling in, I noticed how I had treasured this regular call in a year when nothing else in my life had been predictable.
For decades in my corporate career, I’ve attended and led leadership development programmes with serious investment and serious design behind them. And this small, voluntary, seven-month expedition produced more honest reflection in me than any of it ever did.
I put the reason down to what was at stake. Everyone came to this by choice, for their own growth and for the impact they wanted to have on other people’s lives. Nobody’s job depended on it. Nobody’s salary. There was no review downstream, no colleague who would remember what you admitted. And nobody was trying to impress anybody.
The Call Didn’t Follow the Agenda
But were the stakes all that made this experience different?
The call didn’t follow the agenda. More than one of us came to that call carrying something real. Loss, injury, someone very ill. The call had already been moved once for reasons of the same sort.
Julia opened by saying how grateful she was for everyone’s understanding, and that the messages had made a hard stretch easier to carry.
One of the Explorers shared spontaneously the ache of her recent loss, and then she began to sob, and took herself off camera. Another Explorer joined, her arm in a sling, the scratches on her face still visible from a fall. A third was there with her camera off because she was taking the call from a hospital, sitting with someone she loves who is very ill. Nobody rushed any of it. What happened instead was that heart emojis began bursting across the screen, one after another.
The One Who Holds, or the One Who is Held
I had my own version of this a few months ago, and I did not tell them. My husband had a stroke. It was early in the expedition, and I said nothing to Julia or to any of the Explorers. I wrote about it here to help process it, but stayed quiet with the women I was meeting every month. At the time I told myself that bringing it into the group would be self-indulgent and that it would take up space. It was the same reflex I wrote about earlier in this expedition: being the one who holds, rather than the one who is held.
Watching that call, I understood I had it exactly backwards. The space was not being taken up by any of it. The space was the thing itself.
I said something on the call to that effect: that the designed experience is one part, and that watching how a group holds each other through the hard parts is another. It is probably closer to what leading is. Not a skill set demonstrated in good conditions, but what you do when someone carries something they cannot put down.
Silence Between the Notes
The call finale was a piece called Silence Between the Notes, prepared by two of the Explorers. One read a poem aloud. Another had composed original piano music to sit underneath it.
Everyone went completely still. The words were on the screen, and the narration came through, and underneath both there was the faintest suggestion of piano.
When it ended, the room came apart with appreciation. The Explorer who had written and read the poem came off mute almost immediately, not to accept any of it, but to vouch for the woman who had written the music and was not on the call, to tell us how talented she was. Everyone said they could not wait to hear the music properly. Julia asked that it not be sent out until the sound was fixed to do it justice.
There was something fitting about ending on a thing we could not quite make out and believed in anyway.
An Ending Refers to the Structure
An ending, I decided after that call, refers to the structure and not to the heart of the thing.
The calls are finished. The WhatsApp group is not. The dissemination work carries on, and there is already a date next May, at the house of one of the Explorers in France.
And what will live with me even longer is what the last call taught me about leading. For seven months we worked through frameworks for leading in philanthropy: Essence, Elements, Expression, Energy. They were useful and led to some deep personal and group reflections. And yet, I feel the clearest lesson for me came on the day when the frameworks and the agenda ran out…
Where Leading In Philanthropy Starts
Philanthropy, at its heart, is a response to people carrying things they cannot put down. Loss. Illness. Conflict. Circumstances that are too hard to bear alone. We spend our working lives trying to lessen the burden for those impacted. On the call, I watched the same work done for each other: nobody rushing, nobody fixing, just making room and staying present. I think that is where leading in philanthropy starts. Not with the size of the gifts or the elegance of the strategy, but with whether we can stay present with someone’s hardship. And I am not sure we can do it well for people we never meet if we are not able to do it for the person in front of us.
Seven months ago these were names on a screen. I have come to know some of them deeply, and I admire them. No agenda produced that, and no ending takes it away.
About the Author:
Anila DeHart is an Advisor, Researcher, and Executive Educator on education-workforce coordination and future-of-work. She examines coordination mechanisms that enable sustainable education-workforce partnerships and equitable pathways from learning to meaningful work. Current collaborations include Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) on university-employer partnership infrastructure and the University of Oxford’s AI in Education (AIEOU) 2026 Shared Research Agenda on Future of Education, Work and Institutions.
With twenty years at Deloitte, most recently as Global Managing Director leading talent strategy and workforce transformations for 500,000+ professionals globally, Anila brings deep expertise in future-ready skills systems and organisational change at scale. Her career began in higher education, teaching at universities in Central Europe and as a Fulbright scholar in US, and leading organisational development and strategic recruitment at the University of Arizona.
Anila serves as Executive Coach and Leadership Facilitator at Headspring Executive (Financial Times-IE Business School joint venture). She regularly briefs industry forums on transformation and skills development, and advocates for societal equity through initiatives supporting career advancement for youth and underprivileged groups.
