After 18 years, Dogwood’s founding executive director is moving on

Dogwood was founded 18 years ago as a small, scrappy, non-profit focused on forestry and today has grown into a people-powered organization empowering and engaging more than 250,000 British Columbians to become a powerful voice in our democracy. Through the years, we have grown into a bigger, more complex and more impactful organization than anyone imagined when we launched.

In 2016, to better support our rapidly growing organization, Dogwood began an experiment to transition from a traditional hierarchical structure to an organization that is led collectively by an Executive Team. To enable this transition, Will Horter stepped down as Executive Director and supported the transition to distributed leadership.

Though it has taken some getting used to, this new structure effectively supports Dogwood and has enabled us to achieve some of our greatest successes. This more collaborative structure reflects our democratic values, and the process of creating it reflects our commitment to being a learning organization that constantly evolves and grows to meet new challenges and achieve greater success.

Today, Will Horter is moving on from Dogwood. The Board of Directors has placed full confidence in the Executive Team to continue to lead, learn and grow the organization in support of ever greater impact.

Dogwood owes a tremendous amount to Will. It is with deep gratitude that we recognize and thank Will for his years of service.

At Dogwood, we believe the greatest leaders leave strong leaders behind them, and the strength of our organization today shows how Will has done exactly that. Dogwood has always been bigger than any one of us, and through this decision we are deepening our commitment to our democratic and collaborative values at the highest level of the organization.