By: Status: Home
In Atlanta, where affordable housing is increasingly out of reach and health disparities remain deeply entrenched, Status: Home has stood quietly but persistently at the intersection of both crises. With a legacy spanning over three decades, it is the city’s oldest and largest provider of permanent housing for homeless and low-income individuals and families impacted by HIV/AIDS. The organization, once known as Jerusalem House, has remained consistent in its mission even as the city and the epidemic have evolved. At the helm is President and CEO Maryum Phillips, whose leadership reflects not just operational expertise but a steady vision shaped by experience and values.
As corporate leaders navigate heightened expectations around equity, impact, and ethics, nonprofit executives like Phillips offer a powerful, and often underexamined, reference point. Their version of leadership is built in proximity to community need, refined through constraint, and measured in trust. While their titles may not carry the same spotlight, their decisions reflect a level of precision and accountability that can sharpen how we understand leadership across sectors.
Leading with Purpose as Strategy
Purpose isn’t a separate track at Status: Home; it guides the entire operation. Whether in budgeting, programming, or community engagement, the organization stays aligned with a singular focus: providing stable housing for some of Atlanta’s most vulnerable residents. Leadership here means returning to that focus constantly, using it to shape every decision with intentionality.
Maryum Phillips has translated this approach into clear, lasting progress. Under her leadership, Status: Home acquired five apartment buildings, a move that both ensures long-term affordability for residents and provides greater financial control. While this may resemble a real estate strategy, it’s also a meaningful step toward deepening the organization’s autonomy and impact. Growth, in this context, is measured by how well people are served, not how wide the footprint expands.
Photo Courtesy: Maryum Phillips / Status: Home
Innovation Born from Limitation
The nonprofit environment demands a different kind of innovation, one forged through limits, not surplus. With leaner teams and constrained budgets, nonprofit CEOs often must find practical, immediate solutions to systemic challenges. The innovation they lead tends to be deeply tied to necessity, relevance, and the direct needs of the people they serve.
Faced with Atlanta’s surging rental market, Status: Home pivoted from leasing to owning its housing stock. This decision gave the organization more control over property standards and pricing, safeguarding access for its residents. It also allowed resources to be maximized in a sustainable way. For businesses looking to strengthen their operational strategies, the example offers a model rooted in clarity, focus, and measurable impact.
Culture Built on Commitment
Culture doesn’t need to be engineered through perks or programming; it can take shape through purpose, mutual respect, and a shared sense of responsibility. In the nonprofit world, especially within organizations serving vulnerable communities, that connection between staff and mission is often what fuels both endurance and impact.
At Status: Home, Maryum Phillips draws on more than two decades of nonprofit leadership to build a team environment where values guide the work. With expertise spanning fundraising, strategy, and governance, she’s created a space where alignment isn’t just a concept, it’s part of daily operations. The organization’s 31-member staff brings consistency, focus, and care to their roles, not because of external incentives, but because the work is personal and the direction is clear. For leaders looking to build a culture that lasts, this is an example of what’s possible when belief and structure move in step.
Prepared for Crisis
Unlike corporations that periodically brace for disruption, many nonprofits are immersed in ongoing social challenges. Leadership in this space means being equipped for constant navigation, responding in real time while maintaining long-term focus. Experience in this kind of environment builds a type of resilience that goes beyond crisis management.
Status: Home has operated through shifting public narratives and evolving funding environments since the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Its work began long before widespread recognition of the intersection between health and housing. Under Phillips’ leadership, the organization has continued to adapt, from expanding property ownership to rebranding for greater inclusivity, always with a focus on meeting community needs with foresight and intention.
Accountability Without Performance Theater
In the nonprofit sector, accountability is embedded in structure. Leaders must align their goals not only with internal metrics but with public funding guidelines, community expectations, and long-term impact. The feedback loop is constant, and the responsibility is deeply human.
Status: Home receives support from federal programs like HUD’s HOPWA program through the City of Atlanta, as well as funding from other partners. That level of oversight brings technical complexity, but under Phillips’ guidance, it also supports a culture of integrity. The organization’s reporting systems aren’t just about compliance; they ensure that funding flows directly into services that make a visible, measurable difference in the lives of those it supports. In this, the organization reflects a standard of ethical leadership that many companies are still working to define.
Shaping What Influence Looks Like
Influence doesn’t always emerge from media appearances or social followings. Sometimes, it’s established through enduring presence, coalition-building, and shaping systems over time. For nonprofit leaders, this kind of influence is often earned quietly, through years of partnership and problem-solving.
Maryum Phillips demonstrates this grounded form of leadership. In addition to directing Status: Home, she chairs the board of the National HIV/AIDS Housing Coalition, contributing to national policy efforts while staying embedded in Atlanta’s housing landscape. Her work includes championing a proposal to rename an Atlanta street in honor of founder Evelyn Ullman, an example of how leadership can leave a lasting civic mark. Influence here grows from trust, history, and action, not just visibility.
Purpose That Drives Evolution
At Status: Home, purpose isn’t revisited in moments of branding or crisis; it’s embedded in how the organization thinks, hires, and operates. It influences everything from service design to external communication, offering a clarity of direction that many businesses pursue but often find difficult to sustain.
The organization’s 2023 rebrand, from Jerusalem House to Status: Home, emerged from thoughtful internal conversations about identity and impact. The new name retained the organization’s legacy while creating space for a more inclusive and accessible future. It moved away from assumptions tied to religion and centered the idea that stable housing is foundational to health and dignity. Rather than responding to trends or optics, the change reflected careful reflection and long-term alignment with the evolving needs of the community.
A Blueprint for the Future of Leadership
The most relevant leadership principles today, resilience, empathy, adaptability, and integrity, are already being modeled by nonprofit CEOs across the country. They navigate systems, lead teams, manage crises, and build trust while operating under pressures that many corporate executives have yet to experience.
Maryum Phillips exemplifies this multidimensional leadership. Her work not only supports hundreds of Atlantans through housing and services, it also helps shape the larger conversation about how public health, housing, and social equity intersect. For business leaders searching for grounded, future-focused leadership examples, there is much to learn from leaders like Phillips, who move missions forward while remaining deeply accountable to the communities they serve.
If today’s leaders are serious about building resilient, mission-aligned organizations, they would do well to look toward the nonprofit sector. Status: Home continues to show what it means to lead with purpose, clarity, and care, principles that remain powerful across every industry.
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