On April 11, 2019, seventeen dynamic women gathered in the Washington, D.C. area for the kickoff retreat of the WILL Empower Emerging Leaders Cohort of Learning & Mentoring. The purpose of this cohort is to provide a women-centered space focused on leadership development for emerging leaders to network and learn across worker justice organizations including: public and private sector unions; worker centers; community-based organizations; and research and legal centers focused on worker well-being.

We are pleased to announce the inaugural Emerging Leaders Cohort of Learning & Mentoring.

• Amari Foster, Georgia STAND-UP (Partnership for Working Families), Georgia
• Anne Barnett, Nashville Central Labor Council, Nashville, Tennessee
• Cecilia Ananya Belser-Patton, Missouri Jobs with Justice, Missouri
• Chama St. Louis, Peoria Peoples Project, Illinois
• Dana Smith, United Campus Workers-CWA, Tennessee
• De’Andrea Lottier, LA Black Worker Center, California
• Kayla Blado, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.
• Keani Christiansen, SEIU, Texas
• Katrina Peterson, Puget Sound Sage (Partnership for Working Families Affiliate), Washington
• Lindsay Buck, Kansas National Education Association, Kansas
• Sol Freire, New York Communities for Change, New York
• Mariko Yoshioka, SEIU Local 503, Oregon
• Sara Myklebust, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, Washington, D.C.
• Sarah David Hyderman, National Women’s Law Center, Washington, D.C.
• Shaine Griffin, SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles, California
• Shanika Holder-White, United 4 Respect, North Carolina
• Taylor House, Teamsters Local 117, Washington

You can read their detailed bios in our directory of cohort members.

The emerging leaders spent four days together at the Tommy Douglas Conference Center, just outside of Washington, D.C. We began the retreat with an engaging conversation on the future of workers and the labor movement with Sarita Gupta, a WILL Empower Advisory Council Member and Co-Executive Director of Jobs with Justice as well as Caring Across Generations. Sarita, arguably one of the most forward-thinking labor leaders in the movement, provided our emerging leaders with key lessons from her tenure in worker justice movements as a way to frame our work together.

A key part of WILL Empower’s mission is to develop an intergenerational network of women in labor and to draw upon the strengths of this network to demonstrate an expansive view of the labor movement. In addition to drawing together a diverse group of cohort members in terms of race, ethnicity, geography, organization/institution, roles in organizations, experience, and age, we also tried to have a facilitation team and guests that reflect the diversity of women in worker justice movements.

Mina Itabashi, Organizer with National Jobs with Justice, worked alongside WILL Empower Co-directors Sheri Davis-Faulkner (Rutgers’ Center for Innovation in Worker Organization) and Lane Windham (Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor), and with Marilyn Sneiderman, Executive Director of CIWO at Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR). Guest lecturers and speakers included: Dr. Naomi Williams, a labor historian from Rutgers’ SMLR; Alyx Goodwin, a trainer with Action Center on Race and the Economy, Kierra Johnson, the Deputy Director for the National LGBTQ Taskforce; Tarn Goelling, the Director of Community and Civic Engagement for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW); and DJ Carmen “Spindiego” Berkley, who hosts Sophie’s Parler on WPFW Radio.

We covered topics ranging from the Civil War as the largest labor strike in U.S. history/herstory to learning how financialization of public services and the public good underlies many of the challenges that working people, particularly women, are dealing with in the workplace and our communities. The cohort focused on peer-coaching exercises and started working on their Personal Leadership Plans.

Finally, we concluded the program with an intimate networking brunch with national labor leaders and activists. Liz Shuler, Cathy Feingold, and Julie Farb (AFL-CIO), Amanda Pacheco (IBEW), Cassandra Ogden (Teamsters), Daaiyah Bilal -Threats and Dale Templeton (NEA), Deanna Richards (AFSCME), Michelle Healy (SEIU), Shawna Bader Blau and Sarah McKenzie (Solidarity Center), Neidi Dominguez (IUPAT), Carol Joyner (Family Values at Work), Anna Fink (Amalgamated Bank Foundation), and others all shared wonderful insights about working in the worker justice movement.

“The peer coaching and kitchen table exercises were great intros to open up right away about our work and our communities.”

“Peer mentorship was really great. It was a way to find specific solutions to problems.”

Over the course of the next few months, cohort members will continue to engage one another through peer-coaching circles, one-on-one mentoring, and webinars. These interim activities are intended to provide the ongoing support needed to not only complete their personal leadership plans, but also to connect the cohort with the resources they need to achieve their personal and professional goals going forward. The cohort will gather again in the Fall and we are excited to have each of these powerful women join the WILL Empower network.