The Nexus Fellowship helps individuals become equity leaders in their organizations.
The Nexus Fellowship is designed for senior social change leaders committed to building and sustaining equitable, anti-racist workplaces to advance principles and practices that celebrate, uplift, and ensure that all youth thrive.
One to four fellows are selected from across the country representing organizations dedicated to birth through 12th grade education and adjacent fields (e.g., schools, education nonprofits, pediatric health, early childhood, food justice, housing, child welfare, juvenile justice, and more). The cohort experience equips these leaders with the highest leverage tools to transform communities, organizations, and systems to advance equity, justice, and liberation.
BENEFITS FOR FELLOWS
Connect REDI (Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) principles to everyday life, both in and out of the workplace.
Apply an equity lens to influence structural transformation.
Strengthen adaptive and technical skills to support transformation in their leadership.
Join a national coalition and build community with an elite cadre of equity-driven leaders and organizations.
Cultivate the leadership skills necessary to catalyze and sustain lasting organizational change through monthly individual coaching sessions.
BENEFITS FOR ORGANIZATIONS
Join a network of organizations that are committed to the ongoing work of building and sustaining equity in practice.
Retain expertly trained in-house leaders equipped with the mindsets, skills, and best practices to support REDI efforts.
Align external equity efforts with internal workplace policies and practices that promote inclusivity and belonging.
THE CURRICULUM
Each Nexus experience will provide expert training focused on four key areas: self, liberatory adaptive leadership, liberatory technical leadership, and the equityXdesign process.
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We begin the fellowship experience guiding fellows through a deeper understanding of how our individual identity and lived experience shapes who we are today. We believe an ongoing exploration of self unlocks the potential living within each fellow. Fellows are equipped to be transformational change agents leading from their liberated selves, manifesting what they want for the future, and inviting others to join them in the work.
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This is a deep dive into employing adaptive leadership techniques to advocate and lead for change in an organization, particularly when circumstances are challenging. This change centers liberation and invites openness into the traditional, closed leadership styles that uphold white supremacy culture. This module covers the importance of influence, relationships, and the intangible skills accomplished leaders need to succeed.
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We have learned through equityXdesign that “process equals product.” During this module we explore the patterns, structures, and processes required to lead sustained change management within an organization. Liberatory Technical Leadership is an invitation to embody through practice what we envision for our organizations more broadly.
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A new way to think about and approach achieving equity, the equityXdesign process creates the conditions and relationships for inclusive innovation. It is guided by three central beliefs: that innovation needs inclusion and intentional design; that our past has direct ties to the inequities of our present; and that we have a moral imperative to live in the future |we desire to create. Fellows will consider how design thinking can strengthen their leadership for equity.