Flagging that if I was in the same position as the OP, if I had a bad experience with Catherine, I would probably not trust you here either. Just a pretty unfortunate situation all around. :/
Yeah, that would be understandable (and as you say, unfortunate), and I appreciate you flagging. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this would be true of everyone—when I was a teacher some but not all people felt comfortable expressing disagreements with me to my principal, for instance, and I’m operating here off what I think of as the standard thing of talking to people’s managers if they have concerns. But maybe you mean specifically in the realm of confidentiality? Either way, I think there are a few reasons people might just not feel comfortable being able to raise concerns here, and that sucks.
If you have thoughts on things that would make you feel more at ease in this situation (which you’re raising as a hypothetical but isn’t for the commenter), I’d be very up for hearing.
As an anecdote, my previous employer had an external independent counselor/support-person/coach/therapist/something that you could go to if for any reason you didn’t want to go to the company ones. (I don’t remember if they had paid for like 20 hours total, or if there was a cap of one meeting per person). I never looked into it, but I think the idea was that the external person would then report things anonymously or in aggregate, or not report anything and just offer support.
I’m not sure if it would be net-positive for EA (or even doable at all), but as a hypothetical, I think it would make me feel safer about confidentiality if I was talking to someone that was not employed by EA, close friends and colleagues with many senior EAs and grantmakers and so on.
Flagging that if I was in the same position as the OP, if I had a bad experience with Catherine, I would probably not trust you here either. Just a pretty unfortunate situation all around. :/
Yeah, that would be understandable (and as you say, unfortunate), and I appreciate you flagging. For what it’s worth, I don’t think this would be true of everyone—when I was a teacher some but not all people felt comfortable expressing disagreements with me to my principal, for instance, and I’m operating here off what I think of as the standard thing of talking to people’s managers if they have concerns. But maybe you mean specifically in the realm of confidentiality? Either way, I think there are a few reasons people might just not feel comfortable being able to raise concerns here, and that sucks.
If you have thoughts on things that would make you feel more at ease in this situation (which you’re raising as a hypothetical but isn’t for the commenter), I’d be very up for hearing.
As an anecdote, my previous employer had an external independent counselor/support-person/coach/therapist/something that you could go to if for any reason you didn’t want to go to the company ones. (I don’t remember if they had paid for like 20 hours total, or if there was a cap of one meeting per person). I never looked into it, but I think the idea was that the external person would then report things anonymously or in aggregate, or not report anything and just offer support.
I’m not sure if it would be net-positive for EA (or even doable at all), but as a hypothetical, I think it would make me feel safer about confidentiality if I was talking to someone that was not employed by EA, close friends and colleagues with many senior EAs and grantmakers and so on.
Thanks for this!