Nikki Dinh

By

The end of a journey… so a new chapter can begin.

December 2025 marks the end of many cycles. It is the end of our revolution around the sun per the Gregorian calendar. It is near the end of the Year of the Snake, which has reminded us about outgrowing and shedding the old to get ready for the new. We’ve been asking a question to the field: “What will you release to make room for what’s needed next?”

Below are three journeys we are celebrating in 2025 followed by a glimpse into what is emerging:

1. Evaluation of LLC's Learning Framework

In partnership with the joyful team at Social Insights Research, LLC, was able to evaluate our progress in completing our current learning framework (i.e., our multi-year strategic plan). Through surveys and interviews with over 55 past participants, funders, and newsletter recipients, they received data that confirmed that LLC has made strides toward our strategic goals of (1) Liberatory leadership is widely understood, practiced, funded, and followed in nonprofit and philanthropy, and (2) Just work happens in just ways in the social good sector.  See the executive summary of our evaluation report here. 

We are in gratitude to Nidal Karim, Sashana Rowe-Harriott, and Brianna Halliburton for lending their wisdom to this evaluation. We would like to extend a special thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. These findings help affirm our work and allow us to articulate what has worked so we can continue to offer resources to and hold space for leaders like you.

Below are excerpts from the report:

“LLC is a flower bed and a pollinator for liberatory leadership in the social change ecosystem… LLC’s is directly impacting the praxis of other pollinators in the ecosystem.”

“I think it would have been really easy for liberatory leadership, its definitions, the case examples of it to live as a report on the shelf that LLC sends people for reference. Here’s the definition. Here’s a couple of examples. But instead, that’s the language that they use to describe the work that they’re doing. It’s in the titles that the staff members hold. It’s in the way that they host their convenings. They have embodied, ‘we’re not just talking about liberatory leadership, we are the source and the model for it ourselves.’ So that is something that is very clear, and it’s something that they offer.”

2. Liberatory Leadership Framework

If you haven’t checked it out yet, the  Liberatory Leadership Framework has been released and serves as a practical, values-aligned guide for translating intention into action. It posits leadership as a continuous, iterative process of preparing, assessing, acting, learning, unlearning, and refining. 

This was also an effort many years in the making. I want to thank my current and former colleagues, Ericka Stallings, Iman Mills Gordon, and Sadia Hassan, for lending their brilliance as authors of this framework. The undertaking was not in a vacuum, and it is a true reflection of hundreds of leaders’ imagination of bright possibilities. Thank you to:

  • LLC’s Liberatory Leadership Community of Practice 2023-2024
    1. Felicia Griffin, Co-Executive Director, Transformative Leaders for Change
    2. Neha Mahajan, Co-Executive Director, Transformative Leaders for Change
    3. Darakshan Raja, Executive Director, Muslims for Just Futures
    4. Navila Rashid, Director of Training and Survivor Advocacy, HEART Women & Girls
    5. Nadiah Mohajir, MPH, Executive Director, HEART Women & Girls
    6. Aisha (Ish) Al-Hurra, Artistic Director, Intelligent Mischief
    7. Ditra Edwards, Executive Director, SISTA Fire Rhode Island
    8. Malaika Parker, Executive Director, Black Organizing Project
  • Whole Communities Project
    1. Holly Delaney Cole, LeadersTrust
    2. Ashlee Wimberly, LeadersTrust
    3. Justine Ingram, LeadersTrust
    4. Iman Mills Gordon, Leadership Learning Community
    5. Sadia Hassan, Leadership Learning Community
    6. Ericka Stallings, Leadership Learning Community
    7. Nikita Mitchell, Center for Third World Organizing
    8. Kierra Sims-Drake, Center for Third World Organizing
    9. Chinyere Tutashinda, Center for Third World Organizing
    10. Kharyshi Wiginton, Center for Third World Organizing
    11. Trish Adobea Tchume, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
  • Liberatory Leadership Partnership
    1. Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
    2. Center for Third World Organizing
    3. Social Insights Research
  • Badass Practitioners (my words)
    1. Ananda Valenzuela, Ananda Valenzuela LLC
    2. Susan Misra, Aurora Commons
    3. Elissa Sloan Perry, Change Elemental
    4. Monica Dennis, Co-Lab Collective
  • Leadership Learning Community’s BIPOC Affinity Group (over 450 individuals who have signed up over the last 5 years!)

3. Celebrating Ericka Stallings' Leadership Transition

This year also marked the end of an era of Ericka Stallings as my co-executive director at Leadership Learning Community. Ericka was the first Black woman and woman of color to step up as executive director of LLC. While here, she sharpened our racial justice analysis, collaborated with compassion, and offered the sector another way forward through liberatory leadership. Her leadership has changed me, and I would bet many of you. For that, I celebrate that I had the chance to work so closely with Ericka these past few years.

When Ericka’s transition came up, we were not completely caught off guard. We had a succession policy that was completed. Mostly, we had support from several leaders, coaches, consultants, our board, and funders. A big thank you to Bess Bendet, Krystal  Portalatin-Gauthier, Jennifer Lopez, Duchesne Drew, Beth Kanter, Lisa Leverette, Belma Gonzalez, Ananda Valenzuela, Jas Hall, Shannon Ellis, Bianca Anderson, and Kirsten Lucas, and many more for meeting with me and/or our team around changes and transitions. 

Finally, while we were working on our transition, LLC has held and completed another year of working with organizations going through their own leadership transitions. Our Wisdom on Change Library is here in case you are navigating or helping someone navigate leadership and organizational change.

So what is emerging? In order to build towards bright possibilities, we all may need multiple strategies, such as getting comfortable in composting what no longer serves us, being open to our own transformations, and nurturing the goodness that is still here.

In this year of system shifts and dramatic change in the social good sector, LLC experienced a pressure test for our work – can we still be a liberatory organization? For LLC, we have undergone some growing pains, and we are proud to have stayed true to our values. In our field-level engagements, the feedback we are receiving is that liberatory leadership is needed more than ever. Our sector feels stagnant, and we need flow. What is emerging is that our team feels strong and steadfast in our stride to share practical tools and actions that support leaders in operationalizing equity and liberatory leadership. In other words, we are readying more ways to share our learnings with you, like this worksheet. We look forward to seeing you in 2026