Image Description: Illustration of a person with dark brown skin, wearing a pink shirt and red shorts, sitting on large green leaves beside oversized white flowers, against a soft blue sky with clouds. By Owl Illustration Agency.
In 2020, the world had shut down, and George Floyd’s murder had sparked a global “racial reckoning.” Nonprofit organizations rushed to release statements about racial justice, boards scrambled to diversify their leadership, and suddenly, Black and brown women were being elevated into executive director and CEO roles at an unprecedented rate.
But behind the public commitments and DEI statements was a different story. These newly appointed leaders were calling IISC, exhausted and isolated, because they were inheriting organizations deeply embedded in racism, with fragile budgets and boards that didn’t understand or trust their leadership styles. They were expected to repair harm, transform systems, and lead boldly – all while navigating inadequate resources and limited support. Our movements cannot survive without these leaders, and yet far too many were and still are leaving.
Inside IISC, a group of Black and brown women began talking and recognized what was happening. These leaders didn’t need another technical training; rather, they needed space to exhale, to speak honestly, to be affirmed rather than questioned. They needed room to reset, reflect, and rebuild confidence in who they already were.
Out of those conversations, the first cohort was born. And today, that work continues as Gathering to Rise, now open to Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders.
Building Space During Hard Times
Beginning in 2020, IISC launched a leadership cohort specifically for women of color executive directors and CEOs, made possible through partnerships with the Boston Foundation and Boston Women’s Fund. Across three cohorts through 2023, 45 women of color leaders participated in two online cohorts during the pandemic and one in-person.
Facilitated by Kelly Frances Bates and Aba Taylor, and enriched with coaching from IISC affiliates Adeola Oredola, Eugenia Acuña, Andrea Nagel, and nisha purushotham, the program was intentionally designed to be different from traditional leadership development. Participants weren’t expected to perform professionalism or leave parts of themselves behind; instead, space was created for humanity, honesty, and rest. Leaders gathered in ways that felt embodied and relational, sharing openly about what leadership was costing them and what it was offering them.
Through a blend of coaching, online and in-person cohort sessions, and small “sister pods” for deeper connection, the program explicitly affirmed culturally grounded leadership styles rather than pressuring participants to conform to dominant norms. Leaders spoke about growing confidence and power, setting boundaries, and feeling less alone than they had in years. One participant shared that the program had saved their life during a period of intense stress.
At the time, there were very few programs designed specifically for BIPOC women leaders through a liberatory lens. Applications exceeded capacity in every cohort.
Where the early cohorts asked how leaders could sustain themselves before burnout set in, today’s context feels different. Many leaders are already carrying years of accumulated exhaustion, so the question has shifted to: how do we recover, reconnect, and continue without losing ourselves?
Carrying the Lineage Forward
Gathering to Rise is not a replica of the original cohorts; it’s shaped by this moment while maintaining clear continuity. Adeola Oredola and nisha purushotham, who served as coaches and advisors to the original pilots, are now stewarding this next chapter, bringing deep connection to the lineage of care and relational leadership that defined the early programs. C. Payal Sharma, an IISC Affiliate Consultant/Trainer, and Amy Casso, a Senior Associate at IISC, were also integral to iterating and evolving the offering, helping ensure it remains responsive, grounded, and true to its purpose.
The current cohort expands the original vision, now welcoming Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders. We’re carrying forward: a space centered on care rather than performance, the integration of personal and leadership transformation, coaching as a core element, community over competition, the affirmation of culturally grounded leadership styles, and an honest space for grief, joy, exhaustion, and imagination.
This current version also responds directly to where we are now, centering ancestral wisdom, radical imagination, liberatory practice, and collective leadership at a time when old systems are unraveling.
It’s intentionally built first for an online experience – a choice rooted in access. Online participation allows caregivers, parents, people with disabilities, leaders with limited travel budgets, and those balancing demanding workloads to engage fully.
An Ongoing Commitment
This work has always been grounded in real need. We’re continuing because when leaders are supported in culturally grounded, relational, and affirming spaces, they’re more likely to stay connected to their work, communities, and sense of purpose. Rather than trying to preserve a program, we’re trying to keep our people going.
Gathering to Rise stands on the shoulders of what came before. It carries forward a simple intention: to help leaders reconnect with their gifts, strengthen their capacity to navigate change, and ensure that those who carry so much for our movements don’t have to carry it alone.
If you’re interested in learning more or being notified about future cohorts, please sign up for updates. If you’re a funder, partner, or ally, we welcome conversations about how we might collectively sustain and expand spaces like this over the long term. Get in touch with us.
Image Description: Illustration of a silhouetted person sitting inside a dark cave, looking out toward a calm blue ocean and horizon beyond the cave opening. By Beatriz Camaleão.
So many groups, organizations, and networks that we at Interaction Institute for Social Change supported in 2025 struggled with capacity and focus. So much has been coming at all of us that it can feel difficult to do anything more than respond to the momentary needs.
In an effort to help people stay grounded and strategic as they responded to funding cuts, legal challenges, hunger and housing needs, and physical threats, and to rise a bit off the “dance floor” to have a “balcony” perspective, we have found a few things helpful.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it speaks to some of what we are seeing as fundamentals for navigating ahead:
• Continue to create space for grounding and embodied practices to prevent nervous systems from constantly firing.
• Create opportunities for people to share what they are feeling, for real, as a way of moving intense emotion through their bodies so that it is not stuck, looping, and draining them.
• Bring in the so-called “Eisenhower Matrix” to conversations, asking people to consider where “urgency” and “importance” meet, and when they fall into the habit of responding to every little unimportant thing as if it is a crisis. Encourage them to think about doing more in the important and non-urgent quadrant.
• Bring the “Impact Matrix” to conversations, and ask people to consider the correlation between effort and impact. Ideally, we should be conserving as much energy as possible in these times and looking for opportunities where less effort can yield more impact, while ramping down what requires a lot of energy with little to show for it.
• Invite people to find even brief moments for strategic reflection as they navigate various kinds of real crises. An example of this is work I did last year with a regional food security network as it responded to the federal SNAP cuts. As this amazing coalition organized itself in rapid response mode, I provided a shared document that people could access on their laptops and phones with columns for people to note: (1) what they were learning about both needs and opportunities “out there”, (2) what they were experiencing as strengths of their network, and (3) where they were seeing gaps in and needs for strengthening the network.
There is a lot that will continue to ripple through systems as they unravel and as we iterate our way into the better. Along with practices for “transitional hygiene,” staying focused, strategic, and collaborative will be our collective superpower.
What have you found helpful in keeping eyes and efforts on what matters most?
If your organization, network, or partnership is navigating similar terrain and could use support in creating space for reflection, strengthening collaboration, or sharpening strategy, we’re here. Reach out to explore how we might partner with you in this season.
Image Description: Illustration of a hand holding a lit match, with a small red-orange flame against a warm gradient background of orange and gold. By Ubaid E. Alyafizi via Unsplash.
This year, I’m having an especially hard time saying “Happy New Year” given all that has transpired in just the past three weeks. The list would take up an entire post of its own, but I’ll name the bombing in Nigeria, the military-interevention-called-law-enforcement-action to capture of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores and threats against Columbia and Mexico in a jingoistic revival of the Monroe Doctrine, threats to take Greenland, the murder of Renee Nicole Good and subsequent lies about it, and symbolic actions like renaming the Kennedy Center and the proposal to put the president’s face on US currency. Are you exhausted yet?!
“Recognize that we are already living under an authoritarian regime.” This is not just toxic, polarized politics as usual, and the solutions will have to go well beyond winning seats in Congress in 2026 or the White House in 2028. Among other things, there are institutions and norms to build and rebuild, and hearts and minds to shift and inspire. She reminds us that authoritarianism is not coming; it’s already here. The murder of Renee Nicole Good and the brazen lies about the situation by the president and his minions give more evidence to that fact, on top of all the other mess of the past two weeks alone.
If you’re not convinced, just reflect on all the Trump regime has done to consolidate presidential power and use government institutions to enact retribution and silence dissent, dismantle institutions and norms, upend alliances, exit international institutions, vilify public and civil society efforts to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion, accelerate gerrymandering in an attempt to further consolidate power, strong-arm, threaten, and use military power against leaders around the world, and use symbolic actions to deepen a cult of personality.
“Be louder.” “Articulate the harm that is being done.” Communicate effectively so that people believe that “democracy can deliver.” Be authentic and trustworthy. She reminds us that the authoritarians are intentional about repeating lies so often that they become accepted as truth. We’ve got to keep telling the truth, in clear and compelling ways, even if we don’t see an immediate response. And, she reminds us that more voters sat out the 2024 presidential election (almost 90 million) than voted for the winner (a little over 77 million). There are so many people who need to hear a compelling message about a vision of a better world and the power they have to help create it!
Part of this is being loud about the wins. In a communications landscape that features bad news so prominently, we need to develop the discipline to tell the stories of progress. Here are just a few other reflections on recent progress.
Ordinary people are coming out in larger and larger numbers to protect democracy and to bear witness to aggressive immigration enforcement actions and support their immigrant neighbors.
Several foundation CEOs created United in Advance with the theme that what happens to one of us happens to all of us.
More Black women are being elected to office at all levels of government, reminding us “that representation isn’t symbolic. It’s structural. It’s policy-shaping. It’s democracy-strengthening. And it requires all of us, from the halls of Congress to local organizing meetings to keep building together.”
Find your lane and get busy. “Remember, we don’t have to do everything. You know Everything, Everywhere, All at once. Fantastic name for a movie. Terrible mission statement, but we can all do Something Somewhere Soon.” I love that turn of phrase as an antidote to furious, exhausting effort. Increasingly, we are coming to understand that exhausting ourselves isn’t good for us or for our movements.
I’m on many email and action alert lists and receive requests almost daily to take action on a wide range of issues. Sometimes it’s exhausting, but the good news is that there are a LOT of people doing a LOT of things to block and build. If you’re not sure where to put your precious time and energy, check out networks like MoveOn, 50501, No Kings, Healthcare Not Warfare, Democracy Docket, 18 Million Rising, Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund, Indivisible, Working Families Party, to name just a few. And, these readings could help with some specific action steps to get you started.
And, no matter what lane you’re in, check out Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century for lessons that can help us move forward. You’ve probably heard some of the lessons – like “don’t obey in advance” – even if you haven’t seen this book.
I’d add a few final bits of encouragement from IISC.
Collaborate and strengthen networks. In addition to finding your lane, find ways to connect with folks in other lanes. This could be connecting across issue areas, demographic or geographic communities, or action strategies. This is a moment to deepen and strengthen the collaborative ties that bind and build both the skills and infrastructure to move forward together, even when we don’t agree on everything.
Keep love at the center of it all. Love is the strongest force we have for positive social change. This love isn’t a sentimental feeling. It’s a deep commitment to building a society and institutions that embody shared values. Check out PolicyLink’s A Revolution of the Soul: To realize the unfulfilled promise of our democracy as one where we can all thrive, we must commit to developing an individual and collective soul that can love all. And remember the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a Birmingham jail. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ” Let’s commit and recommit to caring for our own spirits and for one another as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
In the year to come, may we each do our part to effectively guide people to clearer understanding, deeper resolve, more strategic action, compelling visions of a just, equitable, and sustainable future, and meaningful relationships that sustain our individual collective souls. And may we remain open, grounded, and welcoming to fellow travelers, new and old.
Make Meetings MatterJoin us on February 5 for a practical and energizing webinar that teaches simple facilitation practices to turn meetings into inclusive, focused conversations that lead to real progress!
