Celebrated Changemaker

How Kimberly Novod Turned Her Grief into Uplifting Leadership

Leadership is challenging, and we believe in celebrating those who excel. Each month, we invite you to join us in celebrating exceptional leaders who have achieved remarkable feats while collaborating with us at It's the Impact. Leadership can be isolating, and recognition is well-deserved. Please reach out to schedule a Discovery Session anytime.

Leadership can come from anywhere, including our greatest pain. Kimberly Novod, the Executive Director and co-founder of the non-profit Saul’s Light, is an example of a leader who stepped forward after massive heartbreak.

In 2014, Kimberly founded Saul’s Light with her husband Aaron after she gave birth prematurely to her son, Saul. Kimberly had been pregnant for just 28 weeks when Saul was born. Though Saul showed remarkable strength, he eventually passed away. 

Facing the death of a child, many might crumble, but Kimberly transformed her grief into action by founding Saul’s Light, motivated by her struggles with her premature child in the NICU. Saul’s Light now collaborates with hospitals and local groups, offering financial aid, supporting premature birth research, and providing resources to NICU families across Louisiana.

Kimberly is a leader in the truest sense of the word — though she didn’t set out to be one. After Saul’s death, she just wanted to help other families who had gone through the same terrible experience she had. In fact, she began Saul’s Light as a volunteer. But she realized that to make a real difference, she had to create an organization — with her as the leader.  That meant taking a passion project and turning it into an organization with funding, programming, and staff. To do so, she needed to learn new skills, recognize her own value, and push aside the nay-sayers' voices (including her own)  along the way. Our primary goal was to help Kimberly crystallize her vision and leverage her strengths and skills to improve her confidence. We also supported her in determining how to raise enough to support herself with a salary. 

“A lot of people think when you're a nonprofit, you're supposed to do it because of your heart. But I have a family. I have a kid. I have a house. I have bills. So if I was doing this work day in and day out, I realized I deserved to be properly compensated,” she said.

Today, as she sees the impact Saul’s Light has on the families they serve and her community at large, Kimberly feels fulfilled as a leader. “I feel like this is so cheesy, but I'm living my dreams.” We know Saul is proud of her.

The Most Personal Mission

There is nothing more painful than losing a child. But what I find so remarkable about Kimberly is the way she transformed her grief into beneficial societal change. Going through the experience of losing Saul revealed many problems with the healthcare system. After Saul’s death, Kimberly couldn’t just ignore those issues. Great leadership and courageousness are always tied together. Kimberly’s bravery in founding Saul’s Light exemplifies this.

“My experience with Saul made me realize that I was not very privileged. Because I'm a black woman giving birth in Louisiana, and we're 55% more likely to give birth prematurely. That happened to me. I was a statistic. I was lucky to be able to spend time with my baby. I was there every day, all day when he was in the NICU. But everybody can't do that. And the worst reason people can't do that is not because they don't want to — it is because they can't afford to. That's not okay with me. I think that all people who want to visit their babies, who want to be at the bedside and involved in their care, should be able to do that. It should not be just for the people who can afford it. I never want another woman or family to feel like they are just a statistic like I did,” Kimberly said.

Saul’s Light strives to promote equitable access to care and provide resources for all families. Kimberly found the NICU to be a deeply disorienting and hidden place — one that only those who directly impacted ever have to interact with. It’s not an experience any parent can, or wants, to prepare for. Which means that most people know nothing about it. 

But she also saw that many of society's existing inequalities were perpetuated when a child is in the NICU. A family’s NICU experience varies greatly based on their race, ethnicity, language, income, and education level. She found this to be fundamentally unfair and set out to change it.

As such, she embodies the type of leadership that It’s the Impact tries to bring about into the world. It’s a leadership focused on bettering the world and ensuring everyone has equal access to opportunities and resources. “Babies are in the NICU themselves, but they're not the only ones impacted by the NICU journey. The whole family is experiencing the journey. If we want to improve health for babies, if we want to improve mortality and mental health, then we have to support families that are going through this super traumatic experience. The NICU journey is hard for all of us, but it's much more difficult if you don't have money. It's much more difficult if you don't speak English. It's much more difficult if you experience a substance use disorder. At Saul’s Light, we want to be a supportive community for all families, but in particular those families that are going to have a more difficult time with the NICU.”

A Communal Vision

What makes Kimberly’s vision and mission even more inspiring though is that she views her work as a collective, communal endeavor. Saul’s Light acts as a bridge between hospitals and families. By partnering with hospitals to improve the NICU experience for families, she brings the community and medical industry together in a way that’s uncommon. “If we want to improve outcomes, we have to do it collectively, and we can't be pointing fingers at anyone,” she said. 

Her work has made Saul’s legacy larger than just herself. “It may have started with this little boy and his mama, but it's not about us anymore. It's about all the babies and the families in our state and community who are going to walk this road,” she said.

Inspiring Other Leaders

Working with Kimberly at It’s the Impact was an emboldening process. She understands that being a leader engaged in transformational work involves inspiring other leaders. Doubt is inevitable for any leader — Kimberly felt it throughout her career. But she is relentless and encourages other leaders to be so as well. Again, bolstering her confidence and helping recognize she could do everything she wanted to do, was a major focus of our work together at It’s the Impact.

“You can't stop. Part of that being relentless and not stopping is that you draw good people around you. And they support you. Because you are going to doubt yourself every day. But my advice to any leader is to be relentless and get the people behind you that believe in you, even if it's not your family. Because sometimes they might be the biggest doubters, because they've seen you one way your entire life, and it's hard for them to accept that you changed, or it's hard for them to see you in the role of changemaker. But you have that ability in you. Often, we can’t recognize the leaders who are right in front of us. But I would say, ‘It's you. You're that person,’” Kimberly told me.

Being able to work with leaders like Kimberly is why I get up in the morning. It’s what motivates me every moment of every day. She’s an inspiration to me — and I know she’s an inspiration to everyone she comes into contact with. She is a true success story and I’m proud to know her — and I know Saul would be too. She is an example for changemakers everywhere in the way she has turned the darkest moment of her life into an organization that betters the lives of others. She honors her son in everything she does. Her work is a testament to his legacy.

“He's not just a baby that was born too soon and died,” she said of Saul. “There was a short life, but it was a meaningful life. And that life got us to where we are today to be able to feel empathy for people and compassion for people. So this little boy broke my heart open, and the pieces that I get to put back together come from other people and their babies.”

To learn more about how It’s the Impact works with changemakers like Kimberly, and how you can improve your leadership, reach out to me to schedule a Free Discovery Call