Kim Bobo: Leading by Justice and Faith

As Bobo leaves Virginia Interfaith this spring after a nine-year run as executive director, the proof of the wisdom of her hiring lies in her impact. The organization’s budget has increased six-fold since her arrival. The number of engaged volunteers has tripled.  A $300,000 mortgage on the group’s headquarters in Richmond’s historic Shockoe Bottom neighborhood has been paid off. And an activist board of directors has expanded to include a core of highly accomplished, theologically and racially diverse members. 

 

Perhaps most significantly, Virginia Interfaith has scored major legislative victories including playing a significant role in expanding Medicaid services to hundreds of thousands of low-income Virginians. VICPP was also a leader in the coalition that advocated legislation to make Virginia the first southern state to abolish the death penalty, and it contributed to stopping predatory lending and strengthening worker protections. 

 

“I didn’t know anything about Virginia,” Bobo said recently, recalling the fortuitous decision to pack her belongings and travel the 800 miles from Chicago to Richmond in early 2017. She accepted the challenge primarily because of the organization’s mission, and the timing worked. “I needed to shake up my life,” she recalled.

 

As Bobo tells it, “I went off to a gym class one morning and came home to find that my husband of thirty-one years had dropped dead.” The death of Stephen Coats, who advocated for workers’ rights throughout the Americas, set Bobo on a path toward Richmond. She transitioned out of her role as founder and director of Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago, waited until her twin sons Eric and Benjamin had almost finished college, and then made her way east.

 

What Bobo found at Virginia Interfaith was an organization with a strong foundation, a mission that made sense, and devoted members of all faith traditions across Virginia. VICPP was also an organization in disarray. Personnel and financial problems had stripped the group of its potential.  

 

The techniques that Bobo advanced span the gamut from strengthening an underlying network of supporters, to engaging in direct action through prayer vigils and protests, to carefully curating goals. 

 

“What Kim did for the Interfaith Center is that she took us from an organization that wanted to do good and brought us to a strategy of achievable and explainable issues,” said Warren Hottle, a retired consultant who served 19 years on VICPP’s board of directors, stepping down in 2022.  A key to success was framing issues in terms of, “what’s fair?” 

 

“All religions believe in justice,” Hottle said. That scaffolding helped bridge partisan divides. 

 

The answer to what comes next for Bobo, who recently turned 70, is still developing. She has agreed to revise and edit the fifth edition of Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, a popular training manual that she co-authored. She is also intrigued by the possibility of serving as an interim director for other organizations.

 

Bobo is also happy to spend more time with her second husband, David Orr, at their home in Chicago that’s near her two sons. Orr is a former Chicago alderman and Cook County Clerk who briefly served as the city’s acting mayor, and they have a wide circle of activist friends back in the Windy City.

 

Rev. Dr. LaKeisha Cook will take over as VICPP’s executive director on April 1. Bobo believes the Virginia Interfaith board has hired a strong and vibrant successor who will sustain and grow the organization. “It’s a great time to leave, because the organization is in great hands with Rev. Cook,” Bobo said. “And I will always be a supporter and advocate of the critical work of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.”