2020 initiated a radical shift in the Leadership Learning Community’s (LLC) thinking about leadership. Prior to 2020, centering equity was a cornerstone of our strategy. After the emergence of COVID and the post George Floyd rise in racial justice consciousness, we asked ourselves “what are we really seeking?” and determined we were seeking liberation. We haven’t discarded equity, but our thinking has evolved to view equity as necessary but insufficient. However, rather than seeing equity as a problem, we’ve embraced it as a path toward liberation.
Sparking transformative change through leadership
Leadership Learning Community is a national nonprofit organization transforming the way leadership development work is understood, practiced and promoted, primarily within the nonprofit sector. We connect the learning and work of people who believe that supporting equity-based, networked and collective leadership is a lever for catalyzing social justice.
How We Leverage Leadership for Justice
We believe that the dominant leadership development model must be challenged in order for the leadership of all people working toward social justice to be valued, strengthened, and supported. To achieve this we shift the dominant narrative about leadership (what it is and whose leadership will create an equitable and just society); spread innovation to expand equity-based, networked and collective leadership; and build power by aligning resources and work that centers and supports the leadership of community problem solvers.:
How We Work
We generate, test and share learning about how to develop leadership through our network.
Network Activities
Creating Space & Learning Circles:
Covenings that build connection, honor participant wisdom and optimize peer learning.
Webinars and Newsletters:
Online spaces for curating resources, lifting up innovations, and promoting forward thinking concepts.
Collaborative Research:
Thought leadership generated by engaging diverse perspective in collaborative learning focused on equity-based, networked and collective leadership.
Consulting Services
Network Building:
We help you assess your network, weave strategic connections, and nurture self-organizing initiative to activate peer learning and collaborative actions.
Evaluation and Learning Capacity:
We help you and program participants understand what you hoped would happen, what did happen, what difference it made and what to do with what you are learning.
Field Scans & Program Design:
We use stakeholder interviews, research and listening sessions to produce insightful analysis and tangible recommendations related to a specific leadership issue or leadership design question.
Featured Publication
This report was funded to answer the following questions using a series of interviews, research and findings from a meeting of 45 evaluators and program officers with leadership development expertise, hosted on October 2014 at the Annie E. Casey Foundation: What are the key elements of leadership development approaches that are contributing to measurable progress on significant social problems? What evaluation approaches are being used or developed to successfully measure and document the impact of leadership development that results in large-scale change? What opportunities exist to replicate, spread, adapt, or apply lessons from these models to increase the impact of leadership development programming and investments?
Our Impact
“The reports generated by past LLC consulting projects have been useful to me in my work as a public health leadership consultant. I feel that the philosophy and talents of this group match my own values and interests.”
“LLC engages a broad community whose passion is to explore, discover and disseminate both tacit and explicit knowledge and research about contemporary leadership development.”