1. Andy Germak
Executive Director
Center for Leadership and Management
Rutgers School of Social Work
390 George Street, Floor 7
New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
agermak@ssw.rutgers.edu
Tel: +1 201 396 0352
Skype: andy.germak
linkedin.com/in/andygermak
socialwork.rutgers.edu
January 30, 2015
Dear Global Advisory Board Member,
I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you Happy New Year,
thank you for your service as an advisory board member, and update you on the progress of the
Center for Leadership and Management over the past several months.
Since our launch on July 1, 2014, we have been quite busy building the infrastructure of the
center. Associate director, Bert Goldberg, and I welcomed our first full-time staff member,
Andreica Maldonado, in August 2014. Andreica serves as senior program coordinator and is
working on a statewide project (described below). We also welcomed two Master of Social
Work interns, Jiang Wu and Madinah Elamin, in September 2014. Our interns are active
throughout our project portfolio and are honing their skill sets for the job market. Additionally,
we are grateful for Pam Simone’s work as a part-time administrative assistant. Finally, Bai Ye
joined us as a visiting scholar from the Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s Government of
Yunnan Province in China. Ms. Ye’s work in China involves interfacing with international non-
governmental organizations in Yunnan province. She will be with us until October 2015 and has
already begun some comparative research of the American and Chinese nonprofit sectors.
Our project portfolio has been growing steadily since the launch of the center. Our largest
initiative is the County Welfare Agencies Leadership Development Project in which we are
working to assess and enhance the leadership practices of the top-level administrators in public
sector welfare offices throughout the 21 counties of New Jersey. We are finding that many of
these leaders have reached high-level positions without much training or knowledge of
leadership and management best practices. Moreover, the current economic climate in our state
seems to hinder a sustained focus on capacity building amongst these important agencies.
Therefore, we are grateful for the financial support of the New Jersey Department of Human
Services in helping us carry out this important project.
In addition, with generous financial support from Casey Family Programs, we have been
continuing the Management Fellows Program in collaboration with the New Jersey Department
of Children and Families (I began this project a couple of years ago when I was executive
director of the Institute for Families at Rutgers). In this project, we are providing executive
coaching and strategic training sessions to a few dozen managers serving in key roles in the
public child welfare sector throughout New Jersey.
We have also been busy providing training and consultation programs for nonprofit leaders and
managers in New Jersey and beyond. In September 2014, Bert Goldberg and our student interns
performed a short-term fundraising consultation with the South Jersey Cultural Alliance. In
October 2014, we welcomed to Rutgers a group of 23 nonprofit leaders from mainland China. In
collaboration with the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University and
the Huamin Research Center at Rutgers, we hosted this group for a week-long executive training
program in which we provided interactive classroom trainings, visits with CEOs from

2. foundations and nonprofits in New Jersey and New York, and a variety of cultural activities,
including a behind-the-scenes tour and lunch at Ellis Island in New York harbor. This project
was funded by Beijing Normal University and we thank them for their support and interest.
Some of our leadership trainings have also been offered overseas in recent months. In
September 2014, in collaboration with the Office of Continuing Education at Rutgers School of
Social Work and Lavasa Corporation Ltd., based in Mumbai, we sent a training team to Lavasa,
India to conduct two batches of our Certificate Program in Training Skills, an offering aimed at
enhancing the training capacity of organizations. These programs were attended by dozens of
corporate trainers, human resource leaders, academics, and non-governmental organization
personnel. Also, in November 2014, I traveled to Beijing Normal University to conduct a two-
day training program on board development, which was funded by the Asia Foundation. While
there, I also facilitated a two-day workshop on nonprofit governance. The audience for both of
these programs included foundation and nonprofit leaders from across mainland China.
While partnerships with the public and nonprofit sectors have been extremely important to the
development of our center, we have also worked with for-profit, corporate partners in an effort to
broaden the scope and visibility of our work. In November 2014, in collaboration with
Prudential (with the steadfast support of advisory board member, Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio),
Johnson & Johnson, Cigna, and other sponsors, we held a conference entitled, A Brave New
Workplace, which aimed to establish a dialogue between social workers and corporate leaders
around promoting healthy work environments. The event was attended by some 300 people and
included a dynamic keynote address by former U.S. Representative, Patrick Kennedy.
Lastly, in addition to consultation, training, and community service activities, our center’s
mission also involves scholarship, and both Bert Goldberg and I have been active in this regard.
Bert, for example, has a book review “in press” at the Journal of Community Practice. I recently
published a book with Routledge entitled, Essential Business Skills for Social Work Managers:
Tools for Optimizing Programs and Organizations. I would also like to mention that advisory
board member, Othmar Lehner, and I recently published a research article in the International
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation entitled, Antecedents of Social
Entrepreneurship: Between Public Service Motivation and the Need for Achievement.
In closing, I would like to thank you for your continued interest in the Center for Leadership and
Management. I have had the privilege of meeting with several of you over the past few months
and I appreciate all of the advice you have offered. I trust that I will connect with many of you
in the coming months. Until then, be well and stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Andy Germak