These leaders are changing the world! Photo credit: Gayle Roberts.

As the Training Coordinator at Rockwood, I support social change and social benefit leaders to go through our public Art of Leadership Training Program.  It is an honor for me to witness the amazing people who come through our programs, representing an array of organizations from public policy, the arts, philanthropic and LGBTQ sectors.  Every person attends our training for a different reason, but everyone inevitably ends up connecting to one another, and often reconnecting to their own purpose and vision for their lives or work.

Shawn Smith and CeCe Carpio are two of our recent graduates from the April 29-May 3 Cohort.

Shawn Smith gives a Tedx talks about the role social innovation and entrepreneurship will play in the future of international development:

Check out this beautiful mural created by La Pena’s own Cece Carpio with the support and love of the UC Berkeley Multicultural Center staff and interns:

The post Snapshot: Rockwood’s Art of Leadership April 29th to May 3rd, 2013. appeared first on Rockwood Leadership Blog.

All of these events are bittersweet — they remind me that every moment of life is precious — even when I am most unhappy. I, like you, am inextricably woven into a web of human existence, and one day I, like you, will return to the Vast Unknown. Our lives matter. What we do today matters. What we leave behind will matter…

Given the preciousness of your life, how are you doing?

How is your soul?

Take a minute to really check in with yourself — if you were to die tomorrow, are you satisfied with your life so far? Without judging yourself in any way, how are you?

You matter.

What you’re doing with your precious life matters. So I invite you to take a rigorous and kind inventory — are you on purpose? If not, what needs adjusting? What might you need to support your sweet and oh-so-precious life?

It’s Spring, a time of new growth and little seedlings. This is a good time to thin away what we no longer need and to plant seeds we’d like to harvest in the fall. If you’ll allow me the metaphor of self as garden, how is yours?

Does anything need fertilizing? Pruning?

Do you have enough water and sunlight?

Is it time for lying fallow (are you getting enough rest)? In the scheme of things our lives are short, but so much is possible if we live purposefully and if our leadership is filled with vision and partnership. So much more is possible if we take exquisite care of ourselves while we’re at it.

So today I send you blessings of goodwill and harmony. May your life be filled with grace and resilience. May you be happy and well-rested. And may your leadership reflect all of these blessings.

Happy Spring!

From my heart to yours.

Akaya
May 2013

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A CALL TO MEN, Co-founder – Tony Porter presents at TED Women in Washington DC. He shares a powerful message about manhood and the role of men (as a collective) in preventing domestic and sexual violence. At TEDWomen, Porter makes a call to men everywhere: Don’t “act like a man.”

Telling powerful stories from his own life, he shows how this mentality, drummed into so many men and boys, can lead men to disrespect, mistreat and abuse women and each other. His solution: Break free of the “man box.” (Recorded at TEDWomen, December 2010 in Washington, DC. Duration: 11:14)

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The Fellowship Model was designed to address challenges to collaboration, like competition over resources and struggles over different strategies, by convening key leaders within a sector, increasing their leadership skillfulness, and encouraging more connection among these leaders, with the vision of having a expanded, collective impact. Over the last seven years, Rockwood had replicated this model with seven other sectors, convening over 170 leaders, in partnership with twelve foundations.

In May 2012, Rockwood invited Leadership Learning Community (LLC) to assess the design, implementation, and effectiveness of its Fellowship Model in supporting individual leaders and their sectors to have greater collective influence and impact on their leadership and collective capacity within the sector.  Review the methodology, findings and recommendations here:

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Today, in partnership with Rockwood Leadership Institute,  we released the latest installment of VisionTalk.  VisionTalk is a multi-media series brought to you by Center for Media Justice designed to spark a dialog about social movement culture, strategy, and vision.

This Not Ted Style talk, with Restaurant Opportunities Center United’s (ROC-United) Saru Jayaraman, offers a peek behind the scenes of how it looks to build a movement for restaurant workers.

“The restaurant industry is the largest industry in America, proliferating the lowest paying jobs,” says Jayaraman. “Seven of ten of the lowest paid jobs in America and the two absolute lowest paying jobs – dishwashers and fast food preps and cooks – are restaurant workers.”

Jayaraman is part of a generation of progressive leadership facing pressure to grow quickly, causing internal tension between running an organization and being a leader of a national movement.

“A lot of us went national at about the same time,” says Jayaraman. ”We went national out of demand. “There were restaurant workers from all over the country who were organizing and wanted our help.”

Connecting with the growing food movement that seeks an ethical and sustainable culture around food, the restaurant workers are building a powerful voice to compete with the restaurant industry lobby.

We hope to use the ROC United story and this platform to spark a discussion about the types of leadership, capacity building, networks, and cultural strategies are needed to achieve the vision of ground up social movements across the country.

Use #CMJVisionTalk to tell us your leadership story on Twitter, and as always hit that like button above to share with your networks.

Saru Jarayaman received leadership development and capacity building through Rockwood’s Building Capacity for Organizational Resilience & Renewal, launching a partnership with consultant Shiree Teng to address the internal tensions within movements that challenge growth.  Saru is currently touring with her new book, “Behind the Kitchen Door.” 

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This article by Rockwood alums Deepak Bhargava and Rea Carey moved me, for all sorts of reasons but especially because it exemplifies cross-movement collaboration, a practice we’re dedicated to here at Rockwood. I’d love to hear examples of cross-movement work you’re involved in. Please share them in the Comments section below.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights are often defined as consisting of a handful of issues, marriage equality the foremost among them. But as important as the right to marry the people we love is, LGBT equality is about far more than that. LGBT Americans reflect the full diversity of this country, and the issues that shape their lives are far more broad – issues of race, gender, class, and poverty. Immigration is an issue that crosses all of these boundaries. And for that reason, it must rise to the forefront of the LGBT movement’s agenda.

We are often asked: What makes immigration an LGBT issue? In response, we offer three reasons.

First of all, a great many immigrants are themselves LGBT – one of us included. We hold that the test of any social movement is how well it takes care of its most vulnerable. And surely immigrants fall into that category. Take the countless bi-national couples who are threatened with forced separation, solely because the discriminatory Defense of Marriage act denies same-sex partners the right to sponsor each other for citizenship. Take Esmeralda, a transgender Mexican woman who suffered horrific abuse for her gender identity while in immigration detention. Take Juan Rodriguez, a young immigrant and permanent resident who has no viable path to citizenship for his undocumented husband and fellow LGBT and immigration activist, Felipe.

Secondly, winning the support of immigrants is vital to advancing LGBT equality. To be blunt, America is not getting any whiter. It will not be much longer before the United States becomes a majority-minority country. Passing progressive legislation in currently red states like Arizona and Texas will not be possible without a large and growing Latino vote. For that to happen, the LGBT and immigrant communities must unite out of common interest.

The third reason: it’s simply the right thing to do. The LGBT movement is founded on the notion that everyone should be free to live their lives openly as who they are, without concealing an important part of themselves in secrecy and shame. But this is exactly how many undocumented immigrants are forced to live: in hiding, spending every day fearful that they will be discovered, sent into detention, and separated from their families, possibly forever.

Consider the story of Creating Change 2013 speaker Jose Antonio Vargas, a young, brilliant journalist and writer who came to the United States from the Philippines as a young child, and only discovered his status as undocumented when he turned 16 and applied for a driver’s license. Jose publicly “came out” as an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times magazine cover story.

Jose is fortunate. He made a decision that is not available to many other undocumented immigrants, who are at far greater risk of deportation if their legal status is exposed. But in a perfect example of the role that has long been and continues to be played by LGBT people in the immigration rights movement, and how each has learned from the strategies of the other, Jose has founded Define American, a project that helps undocumented immigrants and allies tell their own stories in order to reshape our national conversation around immigration.

Jose’s story is just one of many examples of the collaboration between LGBT and immigration activists. The Task Force and many other LGBT organizations have long been forceful voices in advocating for a more just and humane immigration policy, and thus in recognizing that the LGBT movement cannot live up to its own ideals if it neglects the many Americans, both LGBT and straight, who are forced into a different sort of closet. At the same time, immigrant rights and Latino leaders have forged a bond with LGBT activists, with many becoming strong allies of LGBT equality.

In the end, we owe it to ourselves to recognize that our movements’ goals are not those of separate demographics; they are one and the same. We owe it to those who came before us, and those who will come after us, to demand a a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people who live and work in our communities. That is our common cause: united as one, we will fight for the freedom to be who we are, to love who we want, however we came to this country.

Rea Carey is the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest national organization working to secure equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Prior to coming to the Task Force, she was a co-founder of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence and founding executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. In 1999, The Advocate named Carey one of its “Best and Brightest” for individual contributions to the LGBT rights movement. She earned her master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Find her on Twitter: @Rea_Carey.

Deepak Bhargava is Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change the policies and institutions that affect their lives. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director of the Center in 2002, Mr. Bhargava served as the Center’s Director of Public Policy. He also directed the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition of grassroots groups established in 2000 to give low-income people a voice in the reauthorization of the federal welfare law and other areas critical to poor people. Follow Deepak Bhargava on Twitter: www.twitter.com/changenation.

Reprinted with permission from the authors. The original article was published in the Huffington Post.

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Watch “I’m Triggered” above or click here.

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Rockwood bringing together leaders engaged in national, regional and local work -
Gino Pastori Ng, Co-Director of Youth SEED and Diana Pasquali, Deputy Grassroots Director of Greenpeace.

Exploring what questions leaders have, what they need, and what the current moment is calling for – Wendall Chin, Director of the Center for Third World Organizing and T-Bird Ridgeley.

Pia Infante, Rockwood’s Director of Organizational Partnerships, sharing what we are hearing at the close of the afternoon. Thank you for sharing your thinking and feedback!

The post Snapshot #2: Bay Area Gather March 29, 2013 appeared first on Rockwood Leadership Blog.

The willingness of folks to let down their guards and bring their full authentic selves into a space filled with mostly strangers never ceases to amaze me.

I not only saw a cohesiveness among the leaders present in the room, but many of the thoughts and needs expressed during the Bay Area Gather were reminiscent of what I heard from Rockwood folks in Boston.

One of my favorite aspects of all of our Gathers so far has been the closing. The energy shift in the room is palpable. Individuals have been allowed a moment to check-in with themselves. A group of strangers has begun to bond. Some of our most essential agents for social change have received a little bit of nourishment to continue their difficult work.

I leave reminded of why I love my job.

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And then I look outside my window here in Uptown Oakland. I see merchants with their wares, people going to work, delivery people going about their business, and bicyclists in their bright jackets whizzing along the street. When I really listen in, I realize that this town I love so very much is just fine. Yes, we have many troubles, and we also have so many more gifts. Our young people are brilliant poets and thinkers. We have beautiful public art that honors our ancestors, our museum is vibrant and reflects the city, and our food — have mercy!

It is so easy to get lost in the story of degradation — to only pay attention to what’s going wrong. Cynics thrive on this. It’s not hip or “progressive” to notice what’s working — too often we’re so busy deconstructing the latest egregious act of the _____-industrial complex, that we can miss much of the sweetness around us.

Yes, there was a break-in in my neighborhood last week. We also had a potluck and shared gardening tools. Someone’s dog shat under my tree again, but my neighbor’s annuals are in full glorious bloom. It’s all true, and how I feel about my neighborhood has everything to do with what I’m choosing to see and pay attention to.

I’m not foolish, so I lock my doors. And I’m extremely concerned with how many of our young men of color are dying in our streets. My heart breaks every time I hear of another life lost to violence. I don’t want to paint a false picture of sweetness and light, but it’s also true that Lake Merritt, one of Oakland’s jewels, is being lovingly restored and is breathtakingly beautiful. I’m aware of Rockwood alums working to change the story here in Oakland — creating systems of restorative justice, green jobs, dreaming up new immigration policy, insuring that domestic workers are treated with respect. Many wonderful things are happening daily, but I doubt I’ll read about them in the daily news.

As a leader in my organization, how I show up and what I bring to work each day has a strong impact on those around me. I could work full time only seeing what’s wrong, and that would have devastating consequences on how it feels to be here. I could also work full time seeing only the “good” things, and that would make me unreliable. To keep my heart and mind on what is marvelous about Rockwood while acknowledging our raggedy bits is a deep responsibility, and I’ve found it works best when I pay more attention to what people are doing well than what’s not perfect. I’ve found that a 4 to 1 ratio is just about right.

What are you paying attention to? Leadership is about how we have an impact on others, so I invite you to take a look around and notice the folks who depend on you. What kind of “field” are you creating?

Does anything need adjusting? What might you pay attention to in order to create the world you want? I really believe that happiness is part of my responsibility as a leader, and that the attitude I bring to every moment deeply impacts how our organization will function.

So maybe it’s time to take a break from the news. The world will carry on just fine if I’m not aware of every little awful event. Maybe it’s time I go down to the lake, or visit the museum, or listen to some poets. I’ll bet the people who depend on me would thank me for it.

What might you do? What might you see? How might that transform the world? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

From my heart to yours.

Akaya
April 2013

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