Gender Leadership and Policy Cohort

We celebrated International Women’s Day by flying to Washington DC with our inaugural Gender, Leadership and Policy Cohort for a 6 day immersive experience to learn about the Caregiving Crisis and Care Economy from a national policy perspective. A special thanks to our Oregon delegation members and their teams for making this such a memorable learning opportunity for our program participants. 

Next our cohort will reconvene for virtual learning sessions before reconvening for their cumulating experience in Salem Oregon May 7-8. 

CWL partnered with Family Forward Oregon to host the first in-person session for the new Gender Leadership and Policy Cohort at their inaugural Care Summit. After an open application, 15 selected participants ranging from elected, advocacy, nonprofit, students and community leaders traveled from Jefferson, Malheur, Washington, Multnomah, Marion, and Clackamas county to join us.

Care Summit facilitators included: Candice Vickers, Courtney Veronneau, Marchel Marcos, Delina Biniam, Nat Roadremel, Luz Quevedo, Audreona Mullens, Mayra Lopez Lucio, Christel Allen, Samantha Gladu, Kyndall Mason.

Cohort participants will spend 15 weeks together exploring our nation’s caregiving crisis and caregiving economy while focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and other categories of difference, in order to enact systems-level change. 

About the Program Experience
CWL utilizes cohort experiences as a mechanism to build communities of praxis (that is, communities grounded in a continuous practice of learning, doing, and reflecting). These communities will catalyze learning and growth around leadership practices that are explicitly anti-racist; grounded in intersectional feminist and queer ways of thinking, feeling, and doing; embracing of radical imagination; and dedicated to creating a culture of relationality and care among participants and in our communities.

In collaboration with community leaders, organizations and issue area decision makers we will create a cohort-based learning community to explore our nation’s caregiving crisis and caregiving economy while focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and other categories of difference, in order to enact systems-level change. Together, we will build a curated learning community based on the needs of this year’s participants that is both emergent and iterative. We invite participants to be active participants in shaping their personal agency and leadership through this experience.

This opportunity will be offered as a hybrid learning experience, including: 2 in-person days in Portland, 4 virtual sessions, an experiential learning trip to Washington, DC and 2 in-person days in Salem Oregon.

2025 Program Themes

• The Landscape for Change: Building Power, Organizing, Community Building 

• Caregiving Policy Development and Execution at different levels of government 

• The Care Economy and Oregon’s Budget Landscape and Solutions

• The Personal is Political: Understanding Our Role in Movement-Building and Becoming a Resilient Leader