NAFSA Reviews

Like everyone who leaves this organization, I quickly found myself saying "I wish I had left sooner." There is a total absence of learning at NAFSA. They simply repeat ineffectual old practices. Any changes are cosmetic and a rare improvement is fortuitous, or short-lived. The focus on membership and actually supporting the people who the org is supposed to represent is dwindling, especially (and tragically) in a really rough year for higher ed. Membership and prices continue to rise while less is being offered to support the field. Among the senior staff, including senior directors, there is a culture of betrayal and gaslighting. Bully-behavior is tolerated because nobody does anything about it. The first time it happened to me, I was aghast at how unprofessional some of the staff conducted themselves, and when I brought my shock to my colleagues and they said, "He always gets away with it." with a shrug of the shoulders. This happened again and again because it’s tolerated. It becomes exhausting and infuriating and people can only take so much. There is an uneven application of policy between staff: teleworking, pay disparities between people who do the same jobs, and the annual review procedures being a total joke. The leadership team rarely gives insight into how policies work - when pressed, it's considered a challenge and you'll go through cycles of useless meetings with a lot of raised eyebrows. People are promoted into positions that are already ineffectual or unwanted. The people in the higher level positions either don't know what they are doing or they don't understand the work their staff is performing, so they clog up the flow and pace of any actual work getting done, which adds to the choked-up, slow bureaucratic structure of the entire org. Or, worse, the project stalls out completely and it becomes a foggy memory. It's common for staff to say "Oh, we did something like this years ago, and I don't know what happened to it?" Incredibly uneven distribution of work among staff; Some staff have a workload fit for 2 people and others are asking for work or unclear on what their role is.

- new office redesign spent millions to turn the NAFSA office into a call center space for middle and entry level positions. Noise and lack of privacy is off the charts! Ugly is not a strong enough word for the new design - the 80ties are calling and they would like their call center back -loss of many talented senior level, middle management and entry level employees as NAFSA no longer grows people - its somewhere above 40% over the last 2 years -CFO and CEO are not from the field and have no idea what types of strategic planning would work well for an IE organization. -junkets domestically and abroad for senior staff - one for example is in Sept. to the extremely expensive Salamandar resort for senior staff and board members when membership and revenue is down...a standard rm costs approximately $560 -utter lack of transparency in all areas -bloated number of employees - we are at about 100 and growing - no rationale for why - again our numbers are down -an extreme sense of hostility in this work environment -senior management only concerned with saying yes to CEO which makes sense as they want to keep their jobs and she will fire folks that say - "No, this doesn't make sense." One prominent head rolled and everyone fell in line or quit over the past year. - Hierarchal in management style! It didn't use to be this way. -membership dept. has no idea how to connect with members. -senior staff jostling non stop for favored employee of the month status from CEO -management ignoring key components of what makes NAFSA vital to members...newsflash - its not Marketing Dept.