Y.W.C.A. Chief Dismissed 6 Months After Being Hired
By BRIAN WINGFIELD

Published: October 20, 2003 NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 � The feminist leader Patricia Ireland has been dismissed as chief executive officer of the Y.W.C.A. less than six months after she was hired to lead the 144-year-old organization.

Ms. Ireland was notified of the board's decision last Thursday in New York, where she was attending a conference after a three-day trip to California on Y.W.C.A. business.
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Ms. Ireland said in an interview today that members of the Y.W.C.A.'s National Coordinating Board had met with her in New York and first asked for her resignation. She said she had declined because she did not want to give the impression that she had "jumped ship."

"I was uncharacteristically speechless," Ms. Ireland said. "There had been no notice."

Her dismissal was first reported in this week's edition of Newsweek.

The Y.W.C.A.'s appointment of Ms. Ireland last May drew strong criticism from some conservative groups, which asserted that her background made her unfit to run an organization founded as the Young Women's Christian Association.

Among the concerns they cited then were Ms. Ireland's tenure as president of the National Organization for Women, which supports gay and lesbian rights as well as a woman's right to seek an abortion, and her living with a woman in the early 1990's while remaining married.

Mr. Ireland today praised the Y.W.C.A. as a "wonderful organization with a lot of potential," and she declined to comment on specific issues on which she and the organization's executive board disagreed.

However, Ms. Ireland did speculate on two areas that might have led to her dismissal. She said that in recent years the Y.W.C.A. had been more focused on restructuring than on advocacy work, and that her enthusiasm for advocacy might have "raised some disquiet in some quarters."

She also mentioned an article in The New York Times last May about conservative groups that opposed her appointment as the Y.W.C.A.'s chief executive. At that time, the chairwoman of the Y.W.C.A.'s National Coordinating Board, Audrey Peeples, said that she had not anticipated the intensity of the criticism surrounding its choice of chief executive.

Ms. Ireland said that those comments "set this relationship off on a somewhat difficult course."

Ms. Peeples declined to comment today on the reasons for Ms. Ireland's termination and would not discuss whether the group gave her any warning.

"We had a meeting with her. We told her at the meeting," Ms. Peeples said. "Patricia knows why she was terminated." She also emphasized that advocacy work is one of the Y.W.C.A.'s "hallmark issues."

Ms. Peeples added that the organization and Ms. Ireland were committed to the same goals � the economic empowerment of girls and women and racial equality � but that "the Y.W.C.A. was really just not the best place for her platform."

"We agreed to disagree," Ms. Peeples said.

Dorris Daniel-Parkes, a 15-year Y.W.C.A. veteran and the group's former director of human resources, was named interim director while the Y.W.C.A. conducts a search for a new chief executive.

Ms. Ireland said she harbored no animosity toward the organization, and that she would cooperate with the new chief executive so that there would be a "seamless transition."

A statement on the Y.W.C.A.'s Web site says, "The organization provides shelters for women and families, administers violence-prevention programs for more than 700,000 women and children, and serves more than 750,000 children in child care and after-school programs." It added that its 300 Y.W.C.A.'s should expect no change in operations because of Ms. Ireland's departure, nor should any services the group provides be affected.