Happy New Year!

Like many of you, LLC is kicking off the year with a set of new goals and an emerging vision for the future. We hope you are as excited about LLC’s future as we are, and we invite you to be our partners as LLC sets out to realize our goal of advancing leadership for liberation.

As we embark on this liberatory work, we do so, driven by the challenges and opportunities offered by the current moment. We continue to struggle with a global pandemic, increasingly violent racism, and terrifying threats to democratic institutions. At the same time, there is an exciting rise in consciousness about racial injustice and successes generated by organized and mobilized folx, especially among BIPOC communities, demonstrating our ability to effect change when we act in collaboration.

2021 represents a continued and heightened time of change for LLC. Last year, LLC’s founder and, most recently, LLC’s Co-Executive Director, Deborah Meehan, announced her transition out of her staff role at LLC. Although Deborah is no longer the Co-Executive Director of the LLC, she remains dedicated to and engaged in LLC’s work as a senior consulting team member. In the year ahead, as LLC’s Executive Director, I’m excited to deepen LLC’s work for and commitment to equity, racial justice, and transformative social change. We will also bring a new Co-Executive Director to partner with me on these efforts. In the midst of all of this change, LLC is committed to retaining that which makes LLC special: our reliance on the guidance of our values; our investment in networks; our commitment to building community and authentic relationships; as well as our orientation toward ecocentric rather than ego-centric approaches.

LLC will broaden our network by bringing new faces, voices, ideas, perspectives, and relationships. We endeavor to energize our work by establishing and deepening LLC’s connections to movement work and grounding LLC’s work in power-building and power-shifting action. We are digging into our commitment to center BIPOC leaders and leadership practices in an effort to fundamentally transform our work and the sector, not just change the demographics of the people present. Beyond representation, LLC wants to be a network that feels fun and safe for BIPOC people while simultaneously challenging the white supremacy practices that remain in our work.

This transition has caused LLC to focus on both internal and external alignment, looking deeply at what work we do, how we do our work, and who we do our work with. Some concrete changes you can expect to see in the coming months include:

1. Beginning the search for a new Co-Executive Director:  LLC is committed to a distributed leadership model. The collaborative leadership model is one way we are exploring power-sharing approaches. Beginning in winter 2021, we will start our search for a new Co-Executive Director and ask for your help in the process.
2. Network Weaver Integration: This year, the network weaver site, an invaluable network resource, becomes a project of the Leadership Learning Community. This new relationship allows LLC to share the site’s resources with the broader LLC community, deepen relationships between the leadership and network ecosystems, and create new opportunities to center racial equity and liberation.
3. LLC will onboard new Advisory Board Members, engaged and selected, using a network-centric approach.
4. Active Launch of Liberatory Leadership 2021: LLC is re-centering our work on liberation, exploring what liberatory leadership looks like, and assessing how our work is helping to actualize our vision for liberation. In 2021, we will share models, tools, and innovations while convening the network to advance this work collectively.

Save the Date: January 28, 2021 at 2-4pst / 5-7est. We invite you to join us at an appreciation celebration for Deborah Meehan. We hope you will join us in expressing our gratitude for all Deborah has contributed to LLC and the network and leadership sectors. Deborah’s hard work, commitment, dedication, and graciousness laid the foundation for LLC’s ongoing success.

We’re looking forward to seeing the new challenges she’ll take on, and her continued engagement with LLC.   RSVP HERE!

LLC is excited about what 2021 has to offer and looks forward to partnering with you to make a change and collectively advance our visions for justice.