The Philanthropy Network Blog

In 2007, I was the Regional Director for the MidAmerica Region in the Office of Leadership Giving at MIT when my wife accepted a job at a prestigious law firm in Portland, Maine. At the time I faced a choice: leave MIT, or pitch a "telecommuting" arrangement that would allow me to continue my career at the Institute. Rather than leave what at the time was my dream job, I started working with the MIT Office of Work & Family Life, the MIT Ombudsman's office, and my supervisor, I crafted a proposal to pilot a remote work arrangement. MIT agreed to a 6-month "trial".  A decade at MIT and 13 years as a remote advancement professional later, here we are - all working remotely together. I started my trial period at MIT as a single major gifts contributor and grew my responsibilities to include regional leadership and talent management, to eventually leading all capital fundraising for MIT.nano, then the largest basic research project in MIT History. At MIT I cultiv...

That's no moon. It's a space station. -Obi-wan Kenobi OK so you're about 14 days into your involuntary mobile worklife. If you're lucky, you've created a reasonably sound, functional work routine, connected with your staff, colleagues, bosses and friends, upgraded your at-home tech footprint, and found some continuity in terms of your own productivity. You have a strong sense of what to do when you start your day, a predictable re-entry plan for the end, and in between - well, you're figuring it out. Moreover, if you're like me, you're also grappling with the likely long-term reality of your kids on some distance learning platforms (mine are learning on BlueJeans, SplashMath, Duolingo, and Google Docs), a spouse or partner at home with you (my wife, a law partner, is working from an adjacent space), and your usually calm pets confined with the family, absorbing the stress in the house, feeling needy, and reacting to new family routines. So over...