Leadership Was Never Meant To Be Sustained In Isolation
BY KEMBA HENDRIX, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF NETWORK STRATEGY & MEMBERSHIP ENGAGEMENT, EDUCATION LEADERS OF COLOR
As I reflect on this year’s National Convening, I keep returning to the honesty and trust that filled the rooms. It was designed to be a time and space where leaders could set down performative pressures and speak openly about what matters most in the ebbs and flows of leadership.
We heard from leaders navigating extraordinary pressure while trying to remain rooted in their values and accountable to the communities they serve. We also heard something equally important: a willingness to stay in conversation with one another through that complexity instead of retreating from it. Members described leaving with a renewed sense of purpose, new partnerships forming in real time, and a feeling that is harder to name but unmistakable: the relief not to carry the work alone.
Ten years ago, EdLoC was built on the belief that leaders of color needed more than networking opportunities. EdLoC was intentionally designed as a multiracial, cross-sector Network where leaders could build relationships strong enough to support long-term alignment, partnership, and collective impact. We needed relationships strong enough to hold hard truths, challenge one another, and problem-solve. Conversations about sustainability, uncertainty, and the future of organizations are no longer hidden conversations. Throughout the week, leaders chose to engage those realities openly.
Across the Convening, we heard leaders speak candidly about the pressure to merge, to scale, and to shut down, and about the challenge of navigating increasingly difficult political and financial realities while still protecting the integrity of their work and the well-being of their communities. Across the country, communities and young people of color are facing escalating harm, and many leaders are carrying the weight of responding to that reality while trying to remain rooted in their values and accountable to the people they serve. Those conversations forced us to ask an important question: who and what must we become to meet this moment?
One member, reflecting on the Convening in the days after returning home, wrote: "Early on in the convening, someone offered that it would refill our professional cups. That is exactly what happened." That framing stayed with us. And it points to something EdLoC has always understood, but that this Convening made urgent: the work of refilling cannot happen in isolation. It requires community, trust, and the willingness to show up honestly with peers who understand the terrain.
For EdLoC, part of that answer is to continue evolving how we support leaders and organizations beyond the Convening itself.
This year’s Convening was intentionally designed as a continuation for deeper work around sustainability, partnership, legacy, and long-term impact. Through efforts such as the Innovation for Learning Fund, the Boulder Fund, and the Power in Partnership cohort developed alongside Bellwether, we are building programming that directly responds to the realities leaders shared. Members told us they want more time in smaller rooms, more opportunities to learn from one another's expertise, and more space for the kinds of honest, action-oriented conversations that the Convening made possible.
What became clear at this Convening is that leaders are asking not only how to sustain themselves personally, but how to sustain the organizations, missions, and communities they have spent years building. For many leaders, these are conversations that once felt too uncertain or too isolating to say out loud publicly. What this Convening made clear is that more leaders are choosing to confront those realities together and are asking for the kind of long-term support that makes that possible. We heard that. And it is shaping what we build next.
As we celebrated a decade of EdLoC, our team found ourselves thinking about what we are building toward over the next ten years. We want the leaders and organizations in this Network to be stronger, more connected, and better resourced to continue serving young people of color. The realities shaping education right now did not emerge overnight, and the work of untangling them will take years of sustained leadership, partnership, and commitment. We want EdLoC to continue deepening our support for leaders navigating uncertainty, sustainability, partnership, and change. And we want this Network to remain a place where leaders can come home to honest conversation, courageous leadership, and collective responsibility for the future we are building together.
