How We Develop Leaders
But first, a bit about you.
We know you’re already a leader, leading from where you are, right now. You’re actively serving your community. You volunteer. You donate. You organize. You see needs and you meet them. At work, your coworkers always come to you for advice, you’re already managing up to the people “above” you, and you are always coming from a place of service and giving to support your team.
And you know you could be doing things even better with more leadership development, with the right mentors, and network. So you’re ready to hone your skills and do the work to excel, planning for your future and lifting as you climb higher into leadership.
Maybe you are seeing issues with leadership in your local community, at work, in your faith community. You know things could be done differently, but you’re not sure how to get into the position of being a decision-maker. So you’re ready to learn the skills and how-tos of stepping into the next right leadership position. Maybe it’s a promotion at work, maybe it’s starting a business, maybe it’s serving on a board, or maybe it’s running for office.
Regardless: seeing what’s happening in the world, and in your community, you know things need to change from the bottom to the very top, and you want to take the time to think through how you will create change, and you want to do this in a supportive, collaborative environment, building a network of like-minded people who care about their own communities like you do yours.
This is exactly why we started WLE. To develop new ways of training, gathering, and leading that are honest, equitable, and just. Welcome to WLE. Welcome home.
WLE is the place for leadership development for self identifying women and nonbinary people within the New American Majority. This means people from a wide range of identities, backgrounds, experiences, and geographic regions of the country.
At WLE, we know our identities and their intersections are our strengths that make us better leaders, and we unpack how the world may tell us otherwise, all in preparation to lead. We know there are differences among and within identities, and we know that as human beings, we have much more in common that we are led to believe separates us.
WLE is a brave space where self-identifying women and nonbinary people come to not only hone their skills, but build relationships through honest, and sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the impact of culture and identity on ourselves, each other, and our communities.
We support sharing from our lived experiences to acknowledge and confront many of the issues around identity and intersectionality that do not typically get addressed in spaces of leadership. We do this not only because it serves us to build a framework of identity as strength, but because listening and learning to others of different identities and experiences makes us all better leaders. We do this work so we can rise together.
At WLE, our leadership competencies include:
Continuous Learning: Self Awareness, Emotional Intelligence, & Biases/Systematic Racism/Social Consciousness
Communicating and Building Community: Building Relationships, Problem Solving, Conflict Resolution, & Developing Others
Courage and Resilience: Wellness & Self Care
This means that through our four areas of programming - WLE Gathers training, WLE Uplifts mentorship, WLE Connects affinity circles, and WLE Learns workshops - we will touch on training, skill-building, and how-tos to build proficiency in these areas.
Scroll for details. We can’t wait to show them to you.
WLE Programs
WLE Gathers
Sessions in our leadership development training program focus on skill-building on our leadership competencies in a collaborative, supportive environment. Honesty and sharing encouraged.
Ready to invest in leadership development? Apply to become a WLE Fellow and attend WLE Gathers. Click on the button below to complete our registration form.
WLE Uplifts
All WLE Fellows who attend our WLE Gathers training will become eligible for our WLE Uplifts mentorship program at the close of the training, for follow up and further development. All mentors are trained by WLE so that they are proficient in the leadership competencies.
Are you a WLE Fellow ready to sign up for mentorship? Or are you an Emerge alum, interested in becoming a mentor?
WLE Connects
Our affinity circles are spaces where people of the same identity are about to share experiences, build relationships, and learn from each other. This is a space of peer to peer learning with an intersectional lens launching in 2023. Stay tuned for details as they become available.
WLE Learns
Workshops are launching in 2023. Workshops include peer to peer skill-building, listening, connection and conversation around issues of importance to our community. Watch this space for details as they unfold.