Lessons in Leadership From Women of Color

As nonprofit leaders grapple with increasingly dire threats to their funding and missions, it’s more important than ever to understand what it takes to lead resilient organizations.

For a look at what skills are most important, we hear from Vanessa Priya Daniel, who interviewed 45 social-justice leaders for her new book, Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning.

Daniel combines her extensive research for the book with her own experiences as an organizer and founder of Groundswell Fund and Groundswell Action Fund — which together have distributed more than $100 million to over 200 organizations led by women of color and transgender people.

In a conversation with Chronicle CEO Stacy Palmer, Daniel says her interviews led her to identify three all successful change agents possessed:

• Bold ideas. Incremental solutions don’t add up to enough to solve the tremendous challenges of today and tomorrow. 
• Generosity. Daniel says an “ethos of rising by lifting others” is what makes the women she interviewed successful.
• 360-degree vision. There’s never just one cause of a problem that’s complex and worth solving.

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn.

Further Reading:

• "Open Your Tent for Supporters Wide, Says Leader of Progressive Group" by Nicole Wallace
• "Opinion: White Philanthropy, Here's How to Guarantee Real Change Happens" by Edgar Villanueva and Vanessa Daniel
• "Opinion: A Post-Affirmative Action World Demands More — Not Less — Funding for Black Leaders" by Cora Daniels
• "Opinion: Women Leaders of Color Are Exhausted. Philanthropy Needs to Step Up." by Sayu Bhojwani
• "The Challenges of Being a Woman Leader of Color at a Nonprofit" by Jim Rendon
• "Funders Should Support Nonprofit Leadership Transitions — Now" by Nick Grono
• "Leadership at the Crossroads" by George Anders
• "A Really Tough Job: Nonprofit CEOs Work to Make Their Roles More Manageable" by Ben Gose

We welcome your thoughts on how the Chronicle can help you build your leadership superpowers. Write us at [e-mail].

You can find a video version of this episode at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugOjpCJ3ChE&t=81s

Nonprofits Now: Leading Today is hosted by Stacy Palmer. It’s produced by Emily Haynes at the Chronicle of Philanthropy and from Reasonable Volume, Mary Dooe is the producer, Mark Bush is our engineer, and Rachel Swaby and Elise Hu are executive producers. Additional support comes from Margie Fleming Glennon, Andrew