A Return to Lead

Assuming the role of CEO of the YWCA Lower Cape Fear is a full-circle moment for JHANIQUA PALMER, who first joined the organization in 2019 as coordinator of its Grandparent Support Network. Within months, her role expanded to include advocacy and racial justice work. She later became a program director overseeing the organization’s programs before leaving for a national role with YWCA USA. 

Now, nearly eight years after first walking through the doors of the Wilmington organization, Palmer has returned to lead it into its next chapter. For Palmer, the journey began with a painful lesson about inequity. 

Before coming to the YWCA, she received a promotion while working at another Wilmington organization – and a raise of just $2. She soon learned that colleagues working at the same level would be earning $20,000 to $40,000 more. “I was absolutely devastated,” she says. A sorority sister gave her advice that would change the course of her career: Take the promotion, but find what drives your passion. 

Then Palmer saw a job posting for the YWCA and read its mission: to eliminate racism and empower women. “I was like, ‘I want to work with that organization,’” she says. She wanted women facing pay or gender inequity to know they had somewhere to turn – an organization advocating for them, raising awareness, and offering resources. 

Her work eventually took her to YWCA USA, where she spent three-and-a-half years as a special projects manager working across the national network. She supported projects involving healthcare, real estate, and global relations and served as a staff liaison to the Global Relations Committee. One experience remains especially meaningful: leading delegations to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and meeting with organizations from around the world working to improve the lives of women and girls. 

That experience broadened her perspective and reinforced something she brings back to Wilmington: the importance of listening. “I have to listen to the people in the community,” Palmer says. “I need to listen to where the gaps are. Relationships matter, too – whether with community members, elected officials, funders, or the populations YWCA serves.” 

As CEO, one of her first priorities is looking inward. Palmer wants the YWCA to empower its own employees as intentionally as it empowers the community. She is seeking professional development funding, exploring flexible ways to support employees pursuing degrees or certificates, and emphasizing wellness. 

“I’m very big on empowering them to be healthy,” she says. “I also send them home on time. The work will be here tomorrow.” In one of her first accomplishments as CEO, the board approved a policy allowing full-time employees to receive benefits after thirty days rather than ninety. 

Looking ahead, Palmer is especially excited about relaunching Living the Dream, the YWCA’s entrepreneurship initiative. Living the Dream provides classes on a variety of topics ranging from developing a business plan to navigating LLC or nonprofit filing – all culminating in a pitch competition. She is particularly energized by helping women recognize that the skills they already use – cooking, sewing, hairstyling, design – may be the beginnings of a business. 

She also points to maternal health, affordable childcare, financial literacy, aquatics access, support for kinship caregivers, and the Early Parenthood Program in Columbus County as critical areas of focus. Across New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, and Columbus counties, Palmer sees the YWCA’s role as meeting people where they are. 

What keeps her going when the work is hard is deeply personal, she says. Palmer credits her mentors, close friends, husband, and son. She also draws strength from her grandparents’ story: their journey from sharecropping to education and business ownership, and her grandfather’s memories of walking to school while white children rode the bus. That history is never far from her mind. “I can do this,” she says, recalling what her grandparents endured. 

For young women still wondering whether they are ready to lead, Palmer’s advice is simple, direct and characteristically confident: “If you are a woman, you are a leader, and you already belong in the room.” 

To view more of photographer Daria Amato’s work, go to dariaphoto.com

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