When Icons Leave Well: What Misty Copeland and Darren Walker Teach Us About Funded, Intentional Exits
How two cultural leaders modeled succession planning—and why funders need to pay for it
Misty Copeland didn't want a farewell. After 25 years with American Ballet Theatre and a body ravaged by metal plates, torn ligaments, and bone spurs, she was ready to simply disappear. "I thought, maybe I'll just fade away," she told Harper's Bazaar.
But Darren Walker had other plans.
Walker, the outgoing president of the Ford Foundation, was one of the friends who convinced Copeland to do it differently. "I'm now at a place where it makes sense," she said after his encouragement. "It feels like a launching pad."
Walker knew something about high-stakes exits. In July 2024, he announced he would step down from the $16.8 billion Ford Foundation by the end of 2025—giving 16 months notice for an orderly, public transition after 12 years of leadership. Then he told the first Black female principal dancer in ABT's history not to slip away quietly. Ford Foundation then became the Lead Underwriter for Copeland's October 22, 2025 retirement gala.
This is what modeling looks like. This is what funded succession looks like. And this is what it looks like to leave well—even when there's no one ready to fill your shoes.
Modeling: Do As I Do, Not As I Say
Walker's advice to Copeland wasn't theoretical. He was living it in real time. The Ford Foundation board chair called identifying Walker's successor "the most important responsibility of a governing board," and confirmed "Darren will continue to work with vibrant energy until his last second as president." This wasn't a lame duck period. This was an active, public, planned transition. When Walker advised Copeland, he wasn't speaking from the abstract. He was mid-exit himself, demonstrating exactly what he was asking of her: make it public, make it ceremonial, make it matter.
Leaders listen differently when the person giving advice is doing the hard thing alongside them. Walker could have quietly encouraged Copeland from the sidelines. Instead, he put himself on the same path—announcing his own departure publicly, with lead time, with intention. Then he told her to do the same.
This is mentorship that costs something, and modeling that requires skin in the game.
For boards and leadership: Who on your team / board is modeling the exit you want your ED to have? If you want a graceful, planned succession, someone needs to go first. Walker did this for his sector and for Copeland specifically. Who's doing this for your organization?
Transition Funds: Put Money Where Your Values Are
Here's where funders need to pay attention. Ford Foundation didn't just give Copeland advice—they underwrote her retirement gala as Lead Underwriter, alongside sponsors Brown Brothers Harriman. They also helped fund the free livestream at Alice Tully Hall for the hundreds of people who couldn't afford the $5,000 gala tickets.
This wasn't a grant for programming. This wasn't capacity building. This was funding for a leader to leave well—publicly, accessibly, and with dignity.
Funders: When was the last time you funded a founder's transition?
We'll fund strategic plans, board retreats, technology upgrades, and "leadership development." But funding an ED's departure? Funding the time and space for them to plan their exit? Funding a celebration that honors their legacy and signals to the next generation that this work matters?
Silence.
Here's what happens without funded transitions: Leaders disappear. They burn out. They leave in crisis. They take institutional knowledge with them. The organization scrambles. The board panics. The next leader inherits chaos.
Copeland spent years dealing with injuries—"Jumping hurts, walking hurts, everything I need to do in ballet hurts"—and still almost didn't do a public farewell because of the physical and emotional cost. It took Walker's encouragement AND Ford Foundation's financial backing to make it possible.
The call to action for program officers and foundation leadership:
Add "transition planning" as a fundable expense in your grant agreements. Explicitly. Not buried in "general operating support" where it competes with payroll. Make it a line item:
Executive transition planning
Succession process facilitation
Interim leadership support
Founder/ED departure celebration
If you want healthy leadership transitions in the sector, pay for them. If you want founders to leave before they're dragged out by burnout or board conflict, fund the leaving. If you want the next generation to see that legacy matters and exits can be graceful, underwrite the goodbye.
The Launching Pad: Transitions, Not Endings
"It feels like a launching pad," Copeland said about her retirement in Harpar’s Bazaar. Not an ending. Not a closing. A launching pad.
In her June announcement, Copeland was clear: "It won't be the end of me dancing...Never say never." Her next chapter includes expanding the Misty Copeland Foundation (founded in 2021), producing film and television through her company Life in Motion, and continuing to write books for young readers.
Days after her retirement performance, she revealed she already had "a really cool opportunity" lined up in Los Angeles: "It's nothing like what I did. I want to find a way of doing things that I enjoy and that don't include Swan Lake."
“Planned transitions create momentum, not void.”
When leaders leave well, they're not leaving to nothing—they're leaving for something. The work continues, just in different forms. The leadership doesn't disappear; it redistributes.
Walker's statement echoed this: "The work of the Ford Foundation is the work of generations, and I'm proud to have played a part in leading this storied institution." A part. Not the part. Not the only part. A part.
Copeland framed her own legacy the same way. When announcing her retirement, she told the New York Times: "My whole career is proof that when you have diversity, people come together and want to understand each other and want to be a community together." Her career is proof—but not the proof. She opened doors; others must walk through them.
For departing leaders: What's your launching pad? If you can't answer that, you're not ready to leave—not because the organization needs you, but because you need to know what you're leaving for. Walker knew. Copeland figured it out with his help. What's yours?
For boards: Are you framing the ED's departure as an ending or a launching pad? The language matters. "Janetta is leaving us" versus "Janetta is launching her next chapter" creates entirely different emotional and strategic terrain.
Leaving Without Succession: You Don't Need Someone in Your Shoes to Take Them Off
Now that Copeland has left ABT, there will be no Black female principal dancer at the company.
She left anyway.
Ten years after becoming the first, she's the last. And she's still leaving.
Debbie Allen noted that Copeland "helped to redefine the face of ballet" and expressed hope that "American Ballet Theatre will not wait another 50 years before they have another beautiful Black principal dancer." The pressure is on the institution now, not the departing leader.
This is where we get succession planning wrong in the nonprofit sector. We wait. We wait for someone to be "ready." We wait for the perfect candidate to emerge. We wait for the founder to identify their clone. We wait until the leader is so depleted that departure isn't strategic—it's survival.
Copeland didn't wait. She couldn't. She was dealing with a severe hip injury and could barely walk after her final performance. Your body will make you leave before your board does. Your health will force the decision your strategic plan won't.
The succession gap is the institution's problem to solve, not the departing leader's problem to fix before leaving.
Copeland acknowledged the striking reality that there would be no Black female principal dancer after her, but said her career milestones reflect "a broader understanding that people from Black and brown communities are interested and want to be in these spaces." She built the pathway and now ABT will need to maintain it.
This applies directly to nonprofit leadership transitions:
Founders: You don't need to find your replacement before you can leave. That's the board's job. Your job is to leave well—with transition planning, documentation, relationships intact, and enough runway that the board can do their work.
Boards: Stop waiting for the ED to produce their successor. That's not how healthy governance works. The ED can help with transition planning, but succession is your responsibility. Start succession planning the day you hire someone, not the day they resign.
Funders: Fund organizations through transitions, not just between them. Fund your grantee's interim ED. Fund the search process. Fund the leadership transition consultant.
What Leaving Well Actually Looks Like
On October 22, 2025, Misty Copeland performed excerpts from Romeo and Juliet and Sinatra Suite at a star-studded gala at Lincoln Center. Oprah Winfrey and Debbie Allen gave speeches. Her partner was Calvin Royal III, who in 2020 became ABT's first Black male principal dancer in two decades. At the end, colleagues, teachers, friends, and family came out one by one with hugs and bouquets while golden glitter poured from the rafters. It was public. It was ceremonial. It was funded.
This is what the sector needs: leaders who model planned exits, funders who pay for transitions, and the collective courage to leave before you're forced out—even when there's no one waiting in your wings.
Copeland had been thinking about retiring since 2019. "In all honesty, I've wanted to fade away into the background, which is not really possible. The legacy of what I've created, the way that I'm carrying so many stories of Black dancers who have come before me—I can't just disappear. There has to be an official closing to my time at American Ballet Theater."
She couldn't disappear because the work was bigger than her. The same is true for your ED, your founder, your longtime board chair. They can't just disappear. And they shouldn't have to.
Fund the farewell. Model the exit. Call it a launching pad. And leave before someone has to fill your shoes—because that's their job, not yours.
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