Jessica Muroff joined the United Way Suncoast in November 2019 following her tenure as the chief executive officer of Girl Scouts of West Central Florida and, before that, the CEO of Frameworks of Tampa Bay.
In her four years at the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida, Muroff led a nonprofit organization that served nearly 19,500 girls and nearly 8,500 adult members in Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Marion, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sumter counties.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR PROUDEST PROFESSIONAL MOMENT?
Never in a million years would I imagine I would get a call from MacKenzie Scott giving us an unrestricted $20 million gift out of the blue. No timeframes, no requirements and very little oversight.
My first priority was communication and transparency. This was challenging because we were bound to confidentiality agreements until our donor wanted to share the news of her gift.
Well, those six months were shortened to one week when Scott changed the release date of her announcement. We went right to work to communicate this with the public because to us, she gave the gift to the community and we were stewards charged with ensuring maximum impact. I was steadfast that we had to embrace radical transparency to ensure we kept the community informed on the impact of this generosity.
We built a task force to help us plan and engage partners and experts across all five of our counties. We called it the RISE Taskforce to connect it to our mission. RISE stands for Reach, Invest, Support and Empower our community. We emphasized our values of partnership and collaboration. Meaningful change does not occur in a vacuum and we do our work in partnership with others.
