After six years with St. Paul think tank Citizens League, Pahoua Yang Hoffman is taking on a new, but familiar challenge working with non-profits.
The Minneapolis resident starts May 18 as senior vice president of Community Impact at the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation, a grant making public charity dedicated to improving the lives of Minnesotans.
“It’s a different way of participating,” she said. “It will now be about supporting nonprofits to make sure they have the resources to complete their missions.”
Her career path has been more of a journey of discovery, fueled by curiosity, rather than an ambitious race to the top.
Born in Laos, Hoffman spent the first year of her life in a Thai refugee camp before she and her parents immigrated to the United States.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of St. Thomas. From there, through a fellowship program with TPT-Twin Cities PBS, she got into media and found she had an interest in non-profits and how they work with the government.
“Like most people who enter into policy work, few of us actually plan this career,” she said.
Hoffman served as the manager of government affairs and content administration at TPT. For seven years, she led the station’s government relations, educated elected officials on the company’s programs and monitored policy changes affecting public broadcasting. She also worked with the company’s production teams on local media projects.
She joined TPT in 2007 just a year before voters passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota constitution. TPT still benefits from grants made available through this amendment.
“It was super fun,” she said. “I got to work with a lot of organizations. That was a huge moment for the station and a huge thing for me to be a part of.”
When Citizens League came calling in 2014, she was intrigued, although a bit confused as to what she could contribute.
“I said, ‘Don’t you want someone who wakes up thinking tax policy or transportation policy?'”
League officials said they were looking for someone who had a love of community and broad contacts and didn’t already have a formed opinion on policy. In other words, a generalist.
“He said, ‘It’s more about, do people trust you? Can you bring along people who disagree with you? If you come over to the League, it’s all about bringing people with different opinions together,'” she said.
Hoffman, who is not affiliated with any political party, said she likes looking at all sides of a topic and finding consensus.
“You hear the extremes,” she said. “But it’s somewhere in the middle that we should be landing.”
In 2018, she became the seventh executive director of the Citizens League, and the first woman and first person of color to hold the position in the organization’s 67-year history.
While there, she developed and advanced policy recommendations on topics such as Met Council reform and the minimum wage ordinance in St. Paul. She also helped develop Capitol Pathways, a paid internship program for college students of color that provides legislative training and access to the Minnesota State Capitol.
She was comfortable at Citizens League and wasn’t looking for a change. But when she was approached by someone from the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation who talked to her about supporting nonprofits, she remembered her first job with TPT and for once, felt qualified for the position. The foundation stewards $1.6 billion in charitable assets for community good.
“I have a good grasp of what nonprofit leaders are dealing with on a day-to-day basis,” she said, adding that she knows what it’s like to have “been in the trenches” and to “go to bed thinking about your cash flow situation.”
Due to the pandemic, she said the interview process was very strange, having been conducted over face-time calls and Zoom meetings. She’s anxious for the restrictions to be lifted so she can meet her new employers in person.
“I see this as a continuation of my passion for helping people become their own agents of change and find solutions for the common good,” she said.
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April 26, 2020 at 03:32AM
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Pahoua Yang Hoffman looks forward to new challenges as senior v.p. of community impact for the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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