Inside the Leadership Success of a Millennial and Boomer Who Share the CEO Seat

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Nearly 30 years separate Sherreta Harrison and Raymond Jetson — which is exactly the point. Together, the two — millennial and boomer — lead MetroMorphosis, a community organization in Baton Rouge, La., that helps neighborhoods and local leaders bring about change. After eight years sharing leadership responsibilities, they believe their partnership across generations makes the group more effective and better attuned to the city, their donors, and their staff.

“It is something that we model after communities, because communities are inherently intergenerational,” Harrison says, whether schools, churches, or nonprofit workplaces.

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The 69-year-old Jetson, who grew up during the Civil Rights movement, was among the first Black Americans to navigate traditionally white spaces. He rode a bus with 43 other Black children to integrate an all-white middle school. Harrison, 41, remembers 9/11 as a formative event during her high school years.

Jetson loves the Commodores, a Motown group popular in the 1970s. Harrison is a fan of Lionel Richie, the Commodores lead singer who broke away to become a chart-topping solo balladeer in the 1980s.

Harrison and Jetson have a relationship that breaks sharply from what stereotypes suggest to expect from an older man and a younger woman. “I totally reject this notion of mentor-mentee — a wise sage speaking wisdom to the young Jedi, equipping them to one day wield the sword and manage the Force,” Jetson says.

Nor does the model fit traditional succession planning, in which a young executive is groomed for the top position. Harrison says: “One of the first shifts that was necessary for me — and this would be the case for any younger or less experienced person — is to really remember that you’re not here to replace. You are here to build on and to build with.”

Photo courtesy of MetroMorphosis.

We asked Harrison and Jetson to share their insights and advice for their fellow nonprofit leaders. They spoke with the Chronicle about the strengths of an intergenerational team and how they make decisions. They also talked about how the partnership has changed them.

Excerpts from that interview are below. The text has been edited for length and clarity. You can also see short video excerpts on the Chronicle‘s social media channels: Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.

Millennial Meets Boomer

Sherreta Harrison, chief executive catalyst and co-lead: I think the most important thing that people can know about me is that I am a proud millennial, just turned 41 years old. I’m what people call a “geriatric millennial” — a little bit older than what some people think of as millennial, having been trained by the baby boomer generation and yet in some ways a peer to Gen X.

Raymond Jetson, wisdom and longevity catalyst and co-lead: I was born in early 1956, and so my early childhood included a lot of the civil rights struggles. I witnessed protest marches, riots.

So my worldview is shaped by that. I grew up in a neighborhood where at the end of my street was a six- or eight-foot cinder block wall. The community on the other side was populated by people who were not Black.

I remember walking along the street, and my first exposure to the police department was a car pulling up next to me and stopping and saying, “Boy, the only thing that you could be doing in this neighborhood is working or stealing. And I don’t see any lawnmowers.” That shaped my worldview.

Harrison: Baby boomers tend to be a little bit more hands on and concrete in their approach, while millennials are explicit in our language.

Our work is focused on urban communities, and we know that urban communities are largely inhabited by Black and other people of color. And so we had a conversation around: “Do we just explicitly say that we’re doing race work? And do we just explicitly say that we want to talk about Black communities?” And I think as a millennial, I want to be a little bit more direct and explicit about those issues. I think that’s probably peak millennial, right? For better or worse, we’re calling it out.

Translating for ‘the Old Guy’

Jetson: Sherreta was, in my opinion, perfectly positioned to navigate the space between a baby boomer CEO and a workforce that was changing dramatically and a community that was becoming increasingly multigenerational. Early in our relationship, members of our team started describing Sherreta as the “Raymond Whisperer” because she had the opportunity to engage and to translate the old guy’s words.

Photo courtesy of MetroMorphosis

Harrison: I think it is easy to assume that we might function more like a mother-father role in the organization. Because Raymond is older, people might have a certain level of respect and reverence. Because I am a woman, they may expect that I’d be a little bit more nurturing. What they found — and were shocked by — is that those things actually flip-flopped between the two of us. So there were times I was maybe the stern one, and Raymond was the nurturing one.

Jetson: I knew I did not want to be somebody’s mentor. I did not want to do that. I personally felt as though a broader set of power dynamics is in play when the relationship is defined that way. That really inhibits the ability of the mentee to ever rise to a position of being respected as an individual leader based upon his or her own capacity.

It is absolutely imperative to be peers as you go about this. It does not work if somebody pulls out the trump card.

Harrison: We were really thoughtful about separating this from mentorship or apprenticeship or other traditional models. Younger generations may not be as experienced in the formal practice of leadership, but they bring loads of experience in other ways.

Co-CEOs aren’t the only titles that you can have in a co-leadership model. We thought about this as a sharing of executive functions, not necessarily sharing the executive role. Raymond at the time was the CEO; we didn’t feel like we needed two CEOs, or two Raymonds. What we needed was a Raymond and a Sherreta.

How to Pick Your Co-Leader

Harrison: I would recommend doing an internal audit, looking inside your organization for a person — a younger person or an older person — to discover who you already have a working relationship with and who will complement your skill set.

Jetson: I would encourage you to take the time to really get to know one another. What are your aspirations? What are your hopes? I would secondly suggest that you be adaptive. This is a learning process. It doesn’t just fall into place.

How to Make Decisions

Harrison: Decisions don’t have to be equally shared, with each of you making every decision together. As intergenerational leaders, we are bringing a complementary skill set and complementary background, which means we have different levels of experiences with different things. If we had to make every decision 50/50, we’d lose some of the benefit of this intergenerational co-leadership.

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Raymond and I came up with a decision-making rubric, or checklist, that lists a few criteria about who ultimately gets to make the decision on things. Not every decision has to run through this criteria. You only really need it if there’s some fundamental disagreement.

When the two co-leads feel very strongly in opposite directions, you still have to make a decision that is for the betterment of the organization or the community. So we needed to come up with a more objective way to make that decision.

Jetson: There will be moments when you disagree. But the critical thing is that publicly — and that means with the staff members and the community — we agree. Privately, I might think I had a better idea. But you get to make that decision. And because we are co-leads, I am going to support that, because you are better positioned to make the decision and evaluate its impact on the organization than I am.

How You Will Change

Harrison: As the younger or junior member of the co-leadership team, you have to remember that you’re not doing this alone. You don’t have to do everything right and be perfect, because you have someone else who is sharing the functions, who understands uniquely the role that you are occupying.

Photo courtesy of MetroMorphosis

Jetson: I’m the founder, and that’s not always an easy switch to turn off when you’ve spent years — more than a decade — building and shaping, being the face of the organization. When you sit behind the desk where the buck stops, it’s hard to say, “OK, now I’m responsible for 50 cents of that buck.” It requires years of adjustment.

And part of that is ego. Whether we admit it or not, there is an internal sense of appreciation with accomplishment, with achievement, with attaining certain things. True co-leadership means sharing that space and sharing those relationships, sharing that spotlight.

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