Deborah Meehan

Grant makers invest in leadership development for many different reasons. There are three broad categories of goals and benefits that grant makers are interested in when they support this work: Stronger and more effective leaders and organizations; Social change in a community, region, or field; and, Benefits for the grant maker’s own organization.

Authors: Deborah Meehan, Ellen Arrick

Subjects: leadership development, funders, grantcraft, guide, guides-tools-reports

09/27/2003 - 23:00 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Elissa Perry

A number of foundations have dedicated significant resources to place based initiatives that seek to support partnerships that link organizations and residents of targeted communities in aligning their work, learning together, and implementing creative strategies to improve their communities. Leadership is a critical element in these initiatives. The California Endowment has a strong interest in place based work to increase the health of Californians and commissioned the Leadership Learning Community to learn from leadership strategies in place based initiatives.

Authors: Natalia Castaneda, Deborah Meehan, Anis Salvesen

Subjects: place based, leadership

01/07/2011 - 14:36 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

The election of our first African American president has sparked debate over how far we have come as a nation on issues of race. Some suggest that we are in a post-racial society, but this assumption has not been supported by recent census statistics. While one in seven people in the U.S. are now living in poverty, statistics show that African Americans and Latinos have fared worse during the recession.

Authors: Deborah Meehan

Subjects: structural racism, leadership, Leadership for a New Era

12/01/2010 - 00:00 - 0 comments - 0 attachments - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

This article describes an initiative developed by The California Endowment (TCE) to explore how best to support leadership capacity development in low-income communities and communities of color to create health. TCE’s investment strategies were developed in response to growing disparities in health outcomes and a recognition that there would be little improvement in those disparities without effective, engaged, and connected leadership among underrepresented populations. With the changing demographics in California, TCE is committed to amplifying and aligning the voices of immigrant, youth, and ethnic communities so that they can more effectively influence the systems that affect the health quality of low-income communities and communities of color.

Authors: Claire Reinelt, Dianne Yamashiro-Omi, Deborah Meehan

Subjects: leadership, health

10/04/2010 - 07:21 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

Over the past 50 years our thinking about leadership, whether in communities or board rooms, has been heavily influenced by heroic models of leadership. We traditionally think of leadership as the skills, qualities and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieves a goal using their position and authority. Leadership for a New Era was launched because we believe this way of thinking about leadership is only one part of the story -- one that does not fully recognize leadership as a process grounded in relationships that are fluid, dynamic, non-directive and non-unilateral. Understanding leadership as a process requires us to think very differently about how change occurs and how we work with others. We will never mobilize leadership at the scale needed for significant progress on social justice or any other complex issue without expanding our thinking about what leadership is, how it works and how we can support it.

Authors: Leadership for a New Era Partners, Deborah Meehan, Claire Reinelt

Subjects: social change, Leadership for a New Era

04/19/2010 - 23:00 - 0 comments - 0 attachments - Posted by Natalia Castaneda