The United States faces massive linked crises of spiraling economic inequality, structural racism, climate change, and authoritarian threats to democracy. One indispensable solution to these crises lies in plain view: the huge wave of emerging leaders, largely people of color and women, who have become active in social movements in recent years and brought fresh ideas and energy to these challenges. As Cristina Jimenez, co-founder of United We Dream, the youth-led immigrant-rights network put it in a public conversation with Deepak about leadership: “They’re the ones in the best position to come up with the solutions for the change we need to see and the breakthroughs that the country needs to see.”
Supporting these leaders to pursue vocations in social change and to take positions of power in society is an urgent priority. To figure out how to do that, we worked with a group of diverse movement leaders over the better part of the last year to explore the creation of a new Leadership Center for Democracy and Social Justice at the City University of New York. A team of researchers at CUNY talked to hundreds of leaders at all stages of their careers. We mapped the leadership-development ecosystems on the left and right.
What we learned is that conservative investments in leadership have outpaced and dwarfed progressive ones for decades. Our research uncovered a number of large organizations with big budgets that provide entry into right-wing movements and activism and support a spectrum of volunteer and professional leaders inside and outside government. Just one of their organizations, the Leadership Institute, has an annual budget of $24 million and has trained more than 200,000 people. It offers not only training programs but also career services, professional advice, and continuing learning and workshop opportunities for its members.
Outside this conservative bubble, at last count, U.S. foundations overall spent less than 1 percent of their budgets on leadership development. “We’re scrawny,” noted a progressive movement colleague speaking of the contrast between the infrastructure on the left and right. “We’re dealing with the effects of a 40-, 50-year right-wing assault on everything. They’ve got think tanks, conferences, training programs, etc.”
Importantly, our research also found differences in method, not just scale. Conservative programs stay with leaders over many years, not just for one training or intensive leadership experience — providing career services, mentorship, fellowships, and robust social networks. And they don’t just offer management coaching — they train people on world views and how to acquire and wield power. The motto of the right-wing Leadership Institute is compelling: “You owe it to your philosophy to learn how to win.”
To figure out how to build a robust alternative, we talked with established social-change leaders, people seeking a first job, midcareer activists, and a number of people across disciplines and issues. Some common themes from these conversations were that we need to do the following:
Create pathways for up-and-coming leaders of color, especially women. Many established leaders told stories of their own accidental landing in positions of leadership. Young people cannot see their way into the opaque world of social change. There is no clearly defined way to get a job in social justice without first volunteering, doing an internship, and then applying for a position. Most organizations do not offer pay for these opportunities, which puts them beyond the reach of many who most need them. Those who found their way in confirmed what senior leaders told us about how obscure or inaccessible the entry points are. Said one early-career interviewee: “Getting into this industry, whether it be government or social change is hard. ... It is not necessarily about the skillset, but it is about who you know.”
Provide help to midcareer advocates so they can get through the bumpy moments and take on new challenges. After about five to seven years in social-change work, leaders may be ready for the next challenge, burning out, or entering a stage when very long work hours no longer fit into their personal lives. It’s a big leap even for successful midlevel people into management roles. People who confront entrenched power imbalances in society find it challenging to wield power skillfully themselves. Entry-level roles (as frontline organizers, say) do not always provide them with the competencies they need to move up, such as managing budgets, supervising people, and setting strategy.
Build a hub where leaders can find not only robust training opportunities, but also a hearth they can return to over the course of their careers. Social-change leaders need ways to connect with mentors, peers, continuing education, and space for reflection. Tracking and coaching people as they move from job to job over the decades will benefit all social-justice work — but those duties are beyond the capacity of any single organization.
Assemble and teach a “canon” of social-change leadership. Today we lack a curriculum that integrates understanding of movement history and theories with the day-to-day practice of hard and soft skills, what one person we interviewed called a combination of “movement lens and organization lens.” It’s especially important for people in the early stage of their careers to be exposed in an ecumenical way to the range of approaches from insider advocacy to movement in the streets that are part of successful social-change efforts. Even if people specialize in a particular function, like policy, their orientation at the outset of their careers to other disciplines like organizing and communications will accelerate our collective impact.
Make equity, antioppression, and structural racism central to the DNA for any leadership effort. We must abandon the idea that people of color have deficits that must be addressed for them to ascend to leadership and, instead, provide the support and networks they need for their talents to find full expression. As Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, put it: “Give us the gavel. Give us the resources, because we can do this.”
Emphasize the importance of collective leadership. Successful social-change work requires a strong sense of accountability, an understanding of the value of service to others, and commitment to developing other leaders. This contrasts with the “rock-star leadership” model often promoted by philanthropy. Maurice Mitchell, director of the Working Families Party, said, “What’s necessary is for us to evolve to a different type of leadership that puts at the core collaboration. I don’t think it’s possible for us to do any of the big things we want to do without collaboration. None of us individually has enough power or enough strategic sensibilities or are in enough places or touch enough spaces for us to go it alone. And I think that’s actually a good thing. It means that instead of looking at your objectives in a vacuum, you think about this ecosystem that we’re trying to build.”
Make sure that leadership training is widely accessible. It must be available not only to people in paid roles in social change, but also to grassroots volunteer leaders who are the heart of movement work. What’s more, it should not be simply for front-facing program roles, but also for grooming the people who lead the operations, finance, administrative, and fundraising functions that are crucial to the success of our organizations and movements.
Pay attention to the “inner” aspects of leadership. Issues of resilience, healing, and community need to be at the center of all training.
Our conversations unfolded in a year when the country was roiled by a global pandemic, an economic crisis, potent antidemocratic insurgencies, and an overdue racial reckoning. Many organizations and their staffs were in tumult themselves. Unsurprisingly, there were tensions that surfaced in our explorations.
- While there’s a widespread desire in the nonprofit world to elevate people of color, many people of color worry about tokenism and “performative” rather than substantive equity efforts, and they fear new leaders of color are too often set up to fail. Some raised concerns about organizations that were mainly looking to ensure their staffs were diverse, rather than the acknowledging the need to focus equally on transforming inequitable systems and ensuring that leaders of all racial backgrounds are equipped to do the vital work of multiracial coalition building required in these times.
- Young staff members have different expectations and demands for how they can use their voice and participate in decision making. Some younger activists are questioning the hierarchical structures of many organizations, while others who have fought to move up in the workplace wonder why hierarchy is being questioned at precisely the moment when people of color are finally achieving positions of authority in some movement organizations.
- Big organizations are grappling with the inadequacy of a “human resources” perspective, which tends to be technical, compliance oriented, and bureaucratic. Some are replacing or supplementing human-resources duties with tasks focused on nurturing talent and culture.
- Young people of color and first-generation students are grappling with how to earn a sustainable livelihood in social change. They are deeply committed but worry about low salaries, debt, and grueling work environments. Making a living wage is a top concern for everyone. Young people and midcareer leaders told us they crave mentorship from people whose identities and experiences reflect their own. A consistent theme from young leaders especially is the need to build into leadership development an understanding of the traumas people working in social change have faced, given racism, violence, and growing inequality. They also stressed issues of inclusion for trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and queer people that have not been adequately addressed by social-change leaders.
It’s time for all of us who care about social justice to take a long-term view of career development rather than a single training or immersion approach and listen to what advocates say they need most.
Darlene Nipper, CEO of the Rockwood Institute, which has consistently led the way, put the challenge well: “There is no quick fix for building robust and leaderful movements of knowledgeable leaders who are resilient and thriving. If we want lasting transformational social change in BIPOC communities and beyond, we must invest significantly and boldly in these leaders across all sectors. When we do, we will see the flourishing of our visions and a transformed democracy rather than piecemeal changes and ideological catchphrases that leave our communities and people longing for real, lasting progress towards equity, liberation, and sustainability for all.”