Lead Liberated

How does it work?

The Antiracist Collective: 2026 - 2027:

We are expanding The Collective to all instructional leaders of color, not just principals. This will strengthen the pipeline for principals of color and expand the impact of our work - on both leaders and students. When possible, the leaders’ team will join The Collective to ensure there is collectivism, alignment and momentum to implement antiracist practices and policies. This will promote retention of aligned leaders working towards student learning outcomes.

Participants are leaders who:

have a formal role in leading adults to achieve student learning outcomes,
are seeking a space to heal from internalized racism while learning technical and adaptive instructional leadership skills to ensure students win,
are ready to strengthen instructional coherence across their team, school or system,
are committed to creating antiracist learning cultures in their schools or systems,
ideally, are able to bring members of their ILT, and
are ready to heal and learn with their teams and other instructional leaders across the Bay Area.

The Collective will support leaders to build high performing, antiracist ILTs

Teams will

set and meet their personal Liberated Leadership Goal,
develop a Theory of Action and cycle of inquiry to monitor progress towards goals,
have evidence of using student learning and experience data to drive their decision making,
set and meet 1-2 goals to improve on Lead Liberated’s Antiracist Team Rubric
use data from instructional walkthroughs to co-create effective Professional Development for teachers

Time and readiness permitting, we will

assess their school’s Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) with the seven shifts rubric
design a plan to incorporate 1-2 of the PLC shifts during the next school year.

Assessment of Impact

For each leader & team, we will conduct an initial assessment:

What systems and structures are in place? How effective are they?
What are the current leader and teacher practices?
What are the current student learning outcomes?

Each leader & team will set goals based on the initial assessment to:

achieve their Liberated Leadership Goal
implement at least one new practice or policy
set and meet goals for improving team dynamics and instructional alignment
set and meet goals for growth in teacher practice
set and meet goals for growth in student learning

Cohort 6 will heal and learn as a collective through these structures:

Program Length: August 2026 - May 2027
Launch: Initial retreat dates to be determined
1:1 Leadership Coaching: There will be in person coaching sessions monthly, with the option of virtual as requested.
Cohort Learning: Monthly 9-3 or Twice a month: in person and virtually for ~3 hours each time - within either option, there will be a set time for affinity space for the leaders of color
Observations: The coach will co-observe teaching and learning and team meetings regularly; cadence to be determined between coach and leader based on needs.

How we grow together

We organize our approach through the 3 P’s which help us investigate and dismantle racism at every level it operates on and build new antiracist cultures, starting first with Personal Leadership.

Personal Leadership

First, you create a goal for your leadership that grounds your healing and development, after exploring how you have personally internalized and therefore reproduced racism.

Collective Practices

Then, we focus on collective practices. Principals and teams are developed to undo their collective racist practices and create new norms.

Organizational Policies

Finally, teams are able to critically examine their policies with an antiracist lens and design sustainable antiracist policies that become the cornerstone of an antiracist organizational culture.

"I haven’t received this type of development before. The focus is on antiracism as the through-line in everything that we think about in data, in reading, in math, in working with colleagues, partnering with parents, and in policy creation - this has been a very unique experience for me - and to have it be in coaching, Instructional Leadership Team work, learning sessions, and affinity spaces felt like a whole wrap-around program for me.”

Amber Luna Saberton

antiracist collective participant

"I feel like I'm a very different person. I don't know how to even quantify that. I am deliberate in ways that I was not deliberate before. I'm very clear on what I want and what I don't want. I am unafraid to speak my mind and my truth. I'm very clear on who I am and what I need. I am unwilling to sacrifice those things anymore, and that is what I did before. I sacrificed what I needed, I sacrificed my voice, and I just can't anymore."

Nicole Williams Browning

antiracist collective participant

“I am so grateful for this group… The expertise, facilitation, and joy made such a difference. We got substantive time to work together across schools and with our own school. We are held accountable to the whole. And I really hope that we will get to continue in the coming year."

Anonymous

antiracist collective participant

The Antiracist Collective

The Antiracist Collective: 2026 - 2027:

have a formal role in leading adults to achieve student learning outcomes,

are seeking a space to heal from internalized racism while learning technical and adaptive instructional leadership skills to ensure students win,

are ready to strengthen instructional coherence across their team, school or system,

are committed to creating antiracist learning cultures in their schools or systems,

ideally, are able to bring members of their ILT, and

are ready to heal and learn with their teams and other instructional leaders across the Bay Area.

The Collective will support leaders to build high performing, antiracist ILTs

set and meet their personal Liberated Leadership Goal,

develop a Theory of Action and cycle of inquiry to monitor progress towards goals,

have evidence of using student learning and experience data to drive their decision making,

set and meet 1-2 goals to improve on Lead Liberated’s Antiracist Team Rubric

use data from instructional walkthroughs to co-create effective Professional Development for teachers

assess their school’s Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) with the seven shifts rubric

design a plan to incorporate 1-2 of the PLC shifts during the next school year.

Assessment of Impact

What systems and structures are in place? How effective are they?

What are the current leader and teacher practices?

What are the current student learning outcomes?

achieve their Liberated Leadership Goal

implement at least one new practice or policy

set and meet goals for improving team dynamics and instructional alignment

set and meet goals for growth in teacher practice

set and meet goals for growth in student learning

Cohort 6 will heal and learn as a collective through these structures:

Program Length: August 2026 - May 2027

Launch: Initial retreat dates to be determined

1:1 Leadership Coaching: There will be in person coaching sessions monthly, with the option of virtual as requested.

Cohort Learning: Monthly 9-3 or Twice a month: in person and virtually for ~3 hours each time - within either option, there will be a set time for affinity space for the leaders of color

Observations: The coach will co-observe teaching and learning and team meetings regularly; cadence to be determined between coach and leader based on needs.

We organize our approach through the 3 P’s which help us investigate and dismantle racism at every level it operates on and build new antiracist cultures, starting first with Personal Leadership.

“I am so grateful for this group… The expertise, facilitation, and joy made such a difference. We got substantive time to work together across schools and with our own school. We are held accountable to the whole. And I really hope that we will get to continue in the coming year."

Ready to join the Antiracist Collective?