Paul Bass Photo
Thomas MacMillan Photo
The board of LEAP, one of New Haven’s signature youth programs, has asked its executive director to resign and replaced her with former mayoral candidate Henry Fernandez.
Esther Massie (pictured above at a 2013 mayoral campaign event), who has run the Jefferson Street-based program for the past three years, learned of her fate at the end of work Friday afternoon. Board Chair Ann Baker Pepe came to the building to request that she resign immediately and not return to the building on Monday.
Massie and the board clashed over whether to undertake a long-term strategic plan.
Fernandez scheduled a noon staff meeting Monday to tell the crew that he is the new interim boss.
It is a return engagement for Fernandez. He served as the 22-year-old agency’s first executive director back in 1992. Through 1999 he built it into a nationally recognized after-school and summer academics and recreational program matching urban kids and with college student and college grad mentors. His success with LEAP formed a key part of his campaign bio last year when he ran in New Haven’s Democratic mayoral primary (which he lost to Toni Harp).
Massie declined comment Monday. A graduate of Wilbur Cross High School who holds degrees from Wesleyan and Columbia, Massie first worked for LEAP at as a counselor in the Westville Manor public-housing development. At the age of 22 she ran LEAP’s former New London program. As LEAP’s executive director, Massie was one of two-co-founders (along with Joanne Sciulli of Solar Youth) of a group called YODA in which female heads of seven social-service groups work together to build all their organizations rather than compete for dollars.
Paul Bass Photo
LEAP, which operates out of four locations, is now in the process of hiring staff and recruiting children for its summer programs. Fernandez, who is 45, said Monday the board asked him to serve six months, not just running the organization but helping in the development of a long-term strategy.
“I love LEAP. When I was approached by the board about their need for an intermediate director, I felt had to say yes,” Fernandez said. “There really is no other organization that has that kind of pull on me. Also, there are so many challenges that New Haven is facing right now — obviously the issues of violence but also the community pulling together around education reform and the kind of opportunities that that represents. So I’m hopeful that at the end of the six months that we can have a really great team in place to run LEAP and be serving more children more hours in all sorts of new ways.”
Fernandez said he will continue to run his consulting business while serving as LEAP’s interim director.
Fernandez declined to reveal his salary for the six-month appointment. Nor did board chair Pepe.
In a conversation Monday, Pepe stressed that Massie “has done a great job for LEAP in loads of ways.”
“We’ve been really fortunate to have her. She has increased the number of kids we serve. She has opened a fourth site. She is a really positive presence in the New Haven community,” Pepe said.
“The reason for the change is that the board and Esther ended up on opposite sides about the best way to move ahead in trying to ensure that LEAP is relevant and has as much impact in the future as it has for the past 20 years. We worked together quite effectively over the last three years. This point of difference was something we couldn’t get around. We were committed to getting some external help to make sure that as we strategically plan, we are going to ensure that LEAP still has relevance and impact. There have been a lot of changes in New Haven for the past 22 years.”
