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Kendrall Felder became the Hunt Institute’s chief of staff in November 2022. The Duke University graduate had spent 17 years in the private sector, and though the nonprofit offered significantly less than he could earn elsewhere—with a $150,000 salary, he was its third-highest-paid employee—he agreed to stay for at least two years.
He quit six weeks after he started.
Felder said he joined the education think tank, which was founded by former Gov. Jim Hunt two decades earlier, “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” according to an internal email obtained by The Assembly. He thought he could help grow the Hunt Institute’s revenues fivefold, “further uplift Governor Hunt’s legacy,” and turn the nonprofit into “a national/international powerhouse.”
“However, it hasn’t transpired that way,” he told President and CEO Javaid Siddiqi in the email.
“Candidly, it’s felt like a hostile work environment,” he continued. Felder said the organization was plagued by a “culture of fear,” “micromanaging,” and a “lack of trust.” He wrote that Siddiqi discouraged him from praising staff members and scolded him for being “unplugged” on a company holiday. He was also told it was “disrespectful” to disagree, even privately, with Siddiqi or Michele Jordan, then the institute’s vice president and Siddiqi’s right hand.
“There isn’t a culture of collaboration, trust, or inclusion,” Felder wrote. “There’s a culture of ‘Do what I say.’”
Felder’s experience was far from unique, an Assembly investigation reveals. The Hunt Institute has been drowning in low morale and high turnover for at least two years. Between July 2023 and September 2024, at least 44 employees left the organization—the same number of positions it budgeted for the 2023-24 fiscal year, meaning it saw a 100 percent turnover rate in just 14 months. The average annual turnover rate for nonprofits is about 19 percent.
Last March, nine former employees wrote to the Hunt Institute’s board of directors to ask for changes that would lead to a “healthier, more respectful, and effective organizational culture.” The Assembly obtained their emails from two sources close to the organization.
“The Hunt Institute is being run by an autocratic leader where power is used to demand obedience,” Ann Hentschel, the former director of early learning, wrote to the board. Hentschel declined to be interviewed, saying she did not want to relive the “trauma” of her experience.
The Assembly spoke with a dozen former Hunt Institute employees, from entry-level staffers to managers. Most asked for anonymity, many saying they feared Siddiqi might damage their careers in retaliation.
All said they believed in the Hunt Institute’s mission of helping policymakers become “visionary leaders who are prepared to take strategic action for greater educational outcomes.” But they described a poorly managed organization beholden to the whims of a leader several called a “narcissist.”
The law firm that represented the Hunt Institute for decades also quit last year, according to an email obtained by The Assembly. A firm partner wrote that Siddiqi was focused on his “personal interests” and suggested he wanted to retaliate against employees who complained.
The nonprofit’s board—comprising political, business, and education leaders, including Republican state Sen. Mike Lee and Democratic Lt. Gov.-elect Rachel Hunt, the daughter of the former governor—has declined to oust Siddiqi. It also dismissed complaints from staff members in early 2023, former employees say.
Lee and Rachel Hunt did not respond to interview requests. Former Gov. Hunt, who is 87 years old and no longer involved in the institute’s operations, could not be reached for comment.
Siddiqi initially responded to an interview request by asking with whom The Assembly was speaking. He responded to subsequent requests for comment with a statement of support he attributed to board chair Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education during the Obama administration.
“The Board is satisfied that the historical complaints of former employees do not accurately reflect the culture of the current, thriving, and collaborative workforce,” the statement said. (Duncan told The Assembly in an email that the “statement is fine.”)
Siddiqi eventually agreed to be interviewed. He said he was committed to advocating for young people from disadvantaged communities, and colleagues sometimes disagreed about how best to do that.
“I hate that anybody has ever left the institute with not-so-great feelings about it,” he said. “But I also know we have great people here, and those voices are not representative of the people here at the institute that are trying to improve outcomes for young people.”
But former employees say the board’s failure to act has left the venerated institute in a precarious position.
“This leadership approach is harming the organization’s reputation,” Hentschel wrote in her letter, “and it appears on the verge of imploding.”
‘A Vehicle to Promote Action’
Jim Hunt spent his four terms as governor working to improve public schools. Under the Democrat’s leadership, North Carolina implemented mandatory kindergarten, reduced class sizes, imposed minimum graduation standards, boosted teacher pay, and funded reading aides in primary classrooms.
He left office in January 2001. Two months later, the UNC System created the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy. Hunt became the founding chairman of its board. He held that position—and was a hands-on leader—until 2022, when he stepped down just shy of his 85th birthday.
Hunt viewed his namesake institute as a “vehicle to promote action on improving schools,” he said at the nonprofit’s inaugural event in December 2002.
A decade later, Republicans claimed control of the General Assembly. Their conservative allies eyed budget cuts at state-funded centers and institutes affiliated with UNC, including the Hunt Institute, which they viewed as liberal.
The Hunt Institute broke ties with UNC in 2016. Both sides said the split was mutual. Hunt said that independence would allow the institute to pursue a “more ambitious agenda.” It partnered with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy instead.
A few months later, in October 2016, Siddiqi became the Hunt Institute’s second CEO after the former New York City Public Schools Deputy Chancellor Judith Rizzo retired.
Siddiqi was a former middle school principal who, at the time, served on the Chesterfield County School Board on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. (In 2019, Siddiqi left the school board to run for the county Board of Supervisors; he lost.) He’d initially joined the Hunt Institute in 2014 as head of its Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows Program, which helps “future governors and other political leaders … cultivate smart and effective education agendas.” Eleven veterans of the program are sitting governors, Siddiqi says.
The Hunt Institute’s press release announcing Siddiqi’s promotion touted him as a “former secretary of education,” though he’d only served as Virginia’s education secretary for the final two months of former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration in 2012 and 2013. Before that, Siddiqi, who’d run for office as a Democrat, spent two years as deputy secretary.
Siddiqi, now 47, inherited a relatively small organization he said was “financially challenged.” Tax records show that in the 2016 fiscal year, the institute generated less than $1.4 million in revenue. It expanded over the next six years, bringing in almost $9 million in the 2021 fiscal year. A year later, its revenue more than doubled, bolstered by a surge in pandemic-era philanthropy from major national donors.
The Hunt Institute’s website lists the Bezos Family Foundation, the John M. Belk Endowment, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation among its current funders.
The institute’s staff grew, too. Internal documents obtained by The Assembly show that in July 2020, it had 17 full-time positions. Two years later, it had 54.
Siddiqi’s salary increased, as well. In the 2016-17 fiscal year, Siddiqi was paid just over $226,000, according to tax records. By 2023, he earned more than $450,000.
Siddiqi said that during the pandemic, “there were so many people that were looking for leadership, looking for guidance, and we had sort of curated those relationships. A lot of people found us to be an invaluable resource. And we had funders coming to us saying, ‘Hey, could you do more of this?’”
Former employees said turmoil followed growth. Siddiqi and Jordan—who’d worked at the Hunt Institute since 2003, starting as a program assistant—struggled to adapt to the institute’s larger scale.
The bigger operation led to arbitrary rules and an atmosphere of distrust, former employees say. Siddiqi sniped about colleagues, and perceived slights were met with public reproaches, the former employees say. Siddiqi imposed new rules about paid time off and working from home that some employees found demeaning. They began leaving in droves.
As former managing director Jessica Williams told the board of directors earlier this year, it soon became “a literal dumpster fire.”
“It was apparent to me that [the Hunt Institute’s] root cause issue was an absence of trust and fear of retaliation for speaking up,” she wrote. Williams, who did not respond to an interview request, said she was fired after telling Siddiqi that the institute needed to fix “fundamental” culture problems.
Felder, the former chief of staff, told Siddiqi in an email provided to The Assembly that in his first two weeks in 2022, he “saw 10+ occurrences of tears being shed.”
Felder, who is Black, also said that the institute unfairly disciplined Black and brown employees. “I’ve noticed that the only people who’ve been on [performance improvement plans] since I’ve joined are Black people,” he wrote.
Ultimately, Siddiqi told him, “We don’t trust you,” and, “I don’t give a shit about your credibility,” Felder wrote. If he didn’t “get in line,” he was told his conversations with Siddiqi would get “more firm.” (Siddiqi said he could not discuss specific employment matters.)
Felder asked for a year’s severance in his resignation email. The Hunt Institute countered with three and a half months. “This isn’t a typical resignation and this is no longer an ‘At-Will’ matter,” Felder responded in another email. “I was objectively violated.”
They agreed to about six months’ pay, according to a settlement obtained by The Assembly. Felder, who did not agree to be interviewed, did not provide the documents. The source who did said the confidential paperwork was left lying around the Hunt Institute’s Cary headquarters.
‘RUN RUN RUN’
Jordan, then the vice president, called Ben Christoph one Friday last December to ask where he was.
A month earlier, Christoph had become the Hunt Institute’s communications director, tasked with raising its national profile. Like all employees, he worked from home two days a week.
But—oddly, in his view—the nonprofit required him to live within a 45-minute drive of the institute’s office, though Siddiqi lived in and usually worked remotely from northern Virginia. In addition, per company policy, working from home meant that Christoph had to be in his house from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.—not in a coffee shop or a relative’s home.
“We just got a notification on our tracking system that you’re in South Carolina,” Jordan told him, according to Christoph.
Christoph said he realized that his bosses were monitoring his IP address. He chafed at being actively surveilled but explained to Jordan that he’d recently moved and his Wi-Fi wasn’t set up, so he was using a mobile hotspot that masked his location.
“The Board is satisfied that the historical complaints of former employees do not accurately reflect the culture of the current, thriving, and collaborative workforce.”
statement attributed to board chair Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education
“This is taking a lot of trust for me to believe you right now,” Jordan replied, according to Christoph. “I’m going to need you to go ahead and set up your own Wi-Fi by the end of the day and send me confirmation of that.”
Jordan did not respond to requests for comment. Siddiqi denied that the Hunt Institute tracks employees’ IP addresses.
He also said those who thought it was unfair that he did not live in North Carolina “may not fully understand my job. The reality is most employees don’t know what I do minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. What I will say is I am routinely traveling across the country for work. So even if I lived in Raleigh, I probably wouldn’t be in the office much more than I currently am.”
Christoph quit soon after that phone call. Throughout his two months at the Hunt Institute, he says he was told to stifle dissent and question his team’s work ethic. Even during the hiring process, he says he was pressed on his willingness to fire employees.
“The expectation was just, go be the authoritarian,” Christoph told The Assembly. “Go lay down the law with no pushback, no room for conversation. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
Other former employees say they had similar experiences. Since March 2021, 34 posters who said they were current and former Hunt Institute workers have reviewed the company on the job search website Glassdoor. Their comments were overwhelmingly negative.
“Burnout factory led by narcissistic CEO,” one posted in July.
“RUN RUN RUN,” another wrote in all caps in February. “Most of the staff don’t last a year.”
A few current and former employees left positive reviews.
“Unlike many nonprofits,” one posted in September, “The Hunt Institute embraces a startup-inspired culture that values agility, adaptability, and a relentless pursuit of results.”
The negative reviews appear to have compounded the Hunt Institute’s difficulties in finding replacements.
Internal records appear to show that the Hunt Institute spent more than $200,000 from July 2023 to June 2024 on professional recruitment firms, even after the organization reduced its staff from 54 to 44 positions. (The institute budgets $75,000 a year for administrative consultants and recruiters, documents show.)
The nonprofit’s current budget authorizes 50 full-time positions, according to internal documents. Its website listed 44 employees as of November 19.
‘Are You Loyal to Us?’
The Glassdoor complaints echo what former employees told the board of directors earlier this year.
Williams, the former managing director, wrote to the board that Siddiqi believed staff members were scheming behind his back: “He was so concerned about being deceived by his staff and assuming ill intent that he could hardly talk about anything else.”
A former policy analyst, Marina M. Mendoza, told the board that she “regularly witnessed yelling, vulgar language, and incivility displayed in the office among Javaid and his senior leadership.” She wrote that in one meeting, Siddiqi asked her, “Are you loyal to us?” When she said she was loyal to the Hunt Institute and its mission, “I was told that my answer was not sufficient.”
Mendoza declined to be interviewed. Siddiqi denied demanding personal loyalty.
“I never once asked her to be loyal to me,” he said. “I was asking for that employee, are they committed to the institute? Now I can acknowledge how one might receive that question, and if I go back in time, maybe I would have rephrased the question.”
The distrust that former employees say permeated the organization was coupled with what Siddiqi called “The Hunt Way,” which they said amounted to rigid, unrealistic perfectionism.
“It’s defensive and not open to pushback, resistant to change, there is power hoarding, micromanaging, and holds an idea that quantity is better than quality,” one employee said in a 2022 employee survey obtained by The Assembly.
Siddiqi defined “The Hunt Way” as a “servant mindset, that white-glove service, that curb-to-curb service, like we’re thinking about all these things. There are some people that would suggest we don’t have to think about all of those things, and yet you still would have a good outcome. That may be true; it’s just not the way we do it at the institute.”
The former employees said that while they were well-paid by nonprofit standards, they had little flexibility or work-life balance. They couldn’t work remotely if they were sick, and they lost paid time off if they had a doctor’s appointment or had to take their child to one.
“It’s defensive and not open to pushback, resistant to change, there is power hoarding, micromanaging, and holds an idea that quantity is better than quality.”
response to 2022 employee survey
The statement Siddiqi sent on behalf of Duncan, the board chair, said that after the former employees complained, a board “subgroup” conducted a “prompt, thorough, and privileged investigation.” The statement does not disclose what that investigation found, only that the board backed Siddiqi.
Siddiqi declined to discuss details of the investigation.
That wasn’t the first time the board sided with its president. In late 2022 or early 2023, sources say several employees accused Siddiqi of misconduct. Siddiqi denied any wrongdoing, and the board dismissed those allegations. Around that time, the Hunt Institute paid a former program manager nearly $32,000 after she claimed she faced racial discrimination, according to a settlement agreement and emails obtained by The Assembly.
Several comments in the 2022 employee survey also indicated that people of color might face more scrutiny, even as the Hunt Institute touted its diversity. Siddiqi’s father is Pakistani.
“The leadership at The Hunt Institute has no respect for equity and people of color,” one said.
“I think [the Hunt Institute] has hired more people of color during the time I have been an employee,” said another. But “leadership still wants all those people to conform and does not take into consideration the new ideas or life experiences of employees.”
After the 2023 investigation, Siddiqi went on a “witch hunt,” Kasha Ely, a former communications director, told the board in a letter earlier this year. (Ely did not respond to an interview request.)
“He obsessively tried to weed out staff he deemed insufficiently loyal,” Ely wrote. “… Following the investigation, about eight staff members, all competent and skilled, were either dismissed or resigned, officially due to not being ‘a good fit’ or lacking necessary qualities—the usual explanation given for abrupt departures.”
She added that she was given a poor performance review because “the executive leadership perceived me as insufficiently enthusiastic in my support for [Siddiqi].”
In March 2023, the Hunt Institute’s employment lawyers quit. In an email to board members obtained by The Assembly, Robert Saunders, a partner at Brooks Pierce, said that Siddiqi and Jordan “do not believe that any remedial response is required by the investigation.”
Saunders added that Siddiqi asked for a “detailed briefing regarding the investigation so he can take disciplinary action against the employees he assumes [have] made false claims.” That put the Hunt Institute at risk of retaliation lawsuits, he said.
Saunders recommended that Siddiqi and Jordan disengage from employment disputes—“Their continued direct involvement in HR matters risks increased likelihood of creating legal liability”—and Siddiqi undergo executive coaching. Saunders also said the board “needs to have a mechanism to ensure accountability by Javaid and Michele.”
Though Brooks Pierce had represented the Hunt Institute since its inception, Saunders said Siddiqi had made their relationship untenable. “We have concerns that he believes we are working against his personal interests,” Saunders wrote. “Indeed, he has expressly suggested as much on multiple occasions.”
Siddiqi confirmed that Brooks Pierce no longer represents the Hunt Institute but declined to comment on the email, calling it “privileged information.” Saunders did not respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear whether the board required Siddiqi to receive coaching or implemented accountability measures for Siddiqi and Jordan.
Jordan departed in January to become an education manager at the SAS Institute, a Hunt Institute funder. But former employees say Jordan still functions as a consultant for the Hunt Institute, participating in meetings and daily operations.
‘The Not-Fun Period’
Given the volume of complaints and turnover, former employees interviewed for this article said they didn’t know why the board continues to back Siddiqi.
Some believed the board, which meets twice a year, didn’t fully understand the situation or had been misled. Others cited longstanding friendships some board members had with Siddiqi, Jordan, or former Gov. Hunt, who helped hire Siddiqi.
Still others thought Siddiqi was proficient in the area that mattered most. “He’s a good fundraiser,” Christoph said. “That’s my personal perspective on it.”
The Hunt Institute’s revenues have increased significantly since Siddiqi took the helm. But turnover and the perception of chaos might harm its financial standing.
Several former employees told The Assembly that they believed some major donors planned to end or reduce grants. Internal documents show that the Hunt Institute’s proposed budget for this fiscal year—about $13.7 million—is $5 million less than just two years ago.
Siddiqi said he’s been transparent about the institute’s difficulties with funders and board members. Some of the attrition stemmed from growing too much too fast, he admitted. He also said he made a mistake during the pandemic by changing the institute’s work-from-home schedule several times in rapid succession.
“When you go through a period of rapid growth, you’re perhaps not as vigilant as you once were and certainly should have been,” he said. “We lacked the requisite infrastructure for onboarding, for evaluating talent. And I think that was the beginning of the not-fun period for us.”
Siddiqi also said a lack of “synergy” among the institute’s leaders made it “easy for detractors, or diverging thought, to get out there. And that impacts the culture.”
But he argued that he’s addressed those issues. His new leadership team is “a more consistent reflection of [Gov. Hunt’s] legacy” and the “direction we are moving in organizationally.” They’re more “thoughtful” about hiring and involve more staff in the process.
Duncan, who became board chair in June 2023, told The Assembly that the success of a Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows event earlier this year—in which a bipartisan group of leaders gathered in San Diego to discuss education policy—convinced him that despite its recent turmoil, the institute was on the right track.
He also said that following the recent election of Donald Trump, who has proposed abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, its mission is more urgent than ever.
“In a country that’s so incredibly divided, if there’s one place we can come together, it’s got to be education,” Duncan said. He acknowledged that turnover has “absolutely been higher than I would like it.” But he argued that other nonprofits faced similar challenges during and after COVID.
“My sense is it absolutely has stabilized,” he said. “It’s something that we have to stay on top of. There’s no finish line here. You’re always trying to get better.”
Siddiqi also believes things have gotten better, and he says he’s become a better leader.
“We have such a strong brand externally, and yet, we went through a period of time where people didn’t feel that internally, and ultimately that was my responsibility,” he said. “I do pride myself on being reflective. I can say the way I show up today is not how I showed up two years ago. It’s not how I showed up a year ago.
“And I’m hopeful that the past year is a reflection of what next year is going to look like. I’m feeling confident about where we’re going to be.”
At least 31 employees have left the Hunt Institute in 2024, including two since the beginning of October. One was development director Hannah Hawley, who left her job after less than a year. Hawley, who declined to be interviewed, has a personal connection to the nonprofit: Her grandfather is Jim Hunt.
UPDATE: After this article was published, Lt. Gov.-elect Rachel Hunt told The Assembly that she had resigned from the Hunt Institute’s board of directors on November 18 and called for new leadership.
“The Hunt Institute has a proud history of innovation and advocacy for improving education and creating a fairer, more just world,” she said in an emailed statement. “I am deeply concerned that this mission is being threatened by controversy and instability within the organization and have resigned from the board. It’s time for a fresh start and renewed commitment to the core mission and values that have defined the Hunt Institute’s decades of success.”
Jeffrey Billman reports on politics and the law for The Assembly. Email him at jeffrey@theassemblync.com.