About

JustLead Washington is growing a sustainable network of community leaders who can effectively and collaboratively work toward equity and justice throughout Washington State.  JustLead’s capacity-building work focuses on supporting leadership development, racial equity, and collaboration between legal and community-based partners. Its signature program, the Leadership Academy, is a year-long, cohort-based leadership training where Fellows ground their work in shared values and learn competencies that further leadership at the individual, interpersonal, organizational, system, and social justice movement level.

Since its inception in 2013, the Academy has graduated 174 leaders from across Washington who continue to work together to advance social change, and each year approximately 30 new Fellows join our network. JustLead’s additional training, coaching, consulting, facilitation, and other support services have reached over 900 advocates and leaders.

History

The Leadership Academy was initially proposed in 2010 as a response to a number of changes in the legal services field, including increasingly strained resources, the pending retirement of the founding generation of legal aid leaders, intensifying economic inequality, and a growing awareness about the impact of structural racialization and other systemic oppression. The Washington State Access to Justice Board (“ATJ Board”) and Alliance for Equal Justice (“Alliance”), a network of civil legal aid providers and supporters, recognized that creative, collaborative strategies were necessary to respond to these changes. They also recognized the need to be deliberate and strategic in efforts to develop and support new leaders.

In response, the ATJ Board and Alliance secured the leadership development expertise of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law (“the Shriver Center”) and support from the Legal Foundation of Washington, the Office of Civil Legal Aid, and Seattle University School of Law. In 2013, these partners recruited a first cohort of Leadership Academy Fellows and began to cultivate and educate a diverse network of equity and justice leaders .

The Leadership Academy community has expanded over time, intentionally drawing in a mix of emerging and established leaders from across the justice system as well as from community-based organizations around Washington State, all of whom share the common goal of collaborating and utilizing law & justice tools to end structural oppression such as poverty and racism.

In 2016, Leadership Academy faculty and volunteers began offering additional capacity building services, including leadership and racial equity training and consulting for organizations as well as ongoing coaching and mentorship for the growing network of Leadership Academy alumni. In response, the Leadership Academy rebranded and incorporated as JustLead Washington, an independent nonprofit organization that continues to work in close partnership with the ATJ Board, the Alliance, and other entities working to further social, racial, and economic justice. For more on the history and impact of the Leadership Academy, check out our History & Impact Video.

Testimonials