Our 2019 in Five Pictures

Dear CompassPoint Community, 

As we look back on 2019, we're filled with gratitude for the incredible community of leaders, learners, and supporters who have continued to evolve and grow with us. Thank you for trusting us to partner with you as we work to create a more just and equitable world.

It’s impossible to look back at every workshop, learning experience, connection, and moment of growth (big and small) along the way. But, as a way to share out gratitude for everyone who has been in community with us during 2019, we did want to share five images of memorable moments. (And if you have a memorable highlight from working together this year, we'd love to hear about it. )

1. Centering Self-Care and Black Women in Leadership

Some leadership programs acknowledge the need for self-care, but very few go deeper into the sources of stress and burnout. Even fewer provide the space for Black women leaders to name and heal from multi-generational trauma together. This year, at our home base in Oakland, we launched a Self-Care for Black Women in Leadership Program a cohort program and healing circle centered on just that.

Over the last year, we hosted three different cohorts. The response from our community of participants re-affirmed just how urgent and essential these healing spaces are for Black women leaders. Next year, we’re excited to build on our learning and bring this offering back to our training space.

2. Building Power with Reproductive Justice/Rights Leaders in Louisiana

In a year that has seen a tidal wave of attacks against reproductive rights and health across the country, we’re proud to be back in Louisiana with the second cohort of the HIVE Leadership Development Program (funded by the Packard Foundation). This group of leaders is truly an embodiment of joy, connection, resilience, and community.
 

3. Weaving Together a World Without Violence

This year also marked the end of the Network Weaver Learning Lab (NWLL), a joint project with Change Elemental. NWLL was an 18-month program that created space for leaders to develop their thinking and practice, exploring and experimenting together on ways to advance the movement to end relationship-based violence. One of the many beautiful things that emerged from this project was this Medicine Deck, a collection of illustrated cards that invite us to imagine more liberated and equitable ways of being.

We like this ‘Deep Hanging Out Card’ because it represents a lot of what CompassPoint and its partners are committed to: bringing together leaders and creating time and space to build powerful relationships that move our movements forward.

4. Imagining More Equitable Organizations

Just this past month, we launched the second cohort (pictured above) of our Organizational Equity Program, a cohort program for grantees of the Kresge Foundation, where teams come together and explore how they can better live into values of racial equity using liberatory design principles.

This year, CompassPoint also became one of the inaugural grantees of the ReachFund, an initiative of Borealis Philanthropy that funds organizations and practitioners providing racial equity learning and strategy consultative services to nonprofits. Next year, we will use these funds to pilot bringing our Organizational Equity Program into our workshops program so that it will be available to more organizations.

5. Growing and Changing

Here we are: The CompassPoint board and staff (at least most of us!). This has been a year of slow and steady re-growth in pursuit of our guiding vision and values.

On our blog, we’ve continued to tell the story of our organizational transformation to put racial justice and equity at the heart of our work. We also shared a vision for how our public workshops program will continue to evolve.

On our board, we’ve just added two new board members—Adrienne Kimball and Ada Palotai. Our practice has grown, too. Learkana Chong, Liz Derias-Tyehimba, Hana Lee, and Fela Thomas all joined our team and have brought so many gifts and talents to our community. We’re excited about what 2020 will bring as we continue to grow! 

Thank you for helping to make all of this work (and so much more) possible. We're excited to continue working and learn together in 2020. If CompassPoint has been important in your own growth as a leader, will you help pass the gift of learning along to other leaders like you?


 

In partnership and solidarity,
The CompassPoint Team