Black Women’s Executive Directors Program
Investing in the Leaders Who Power Justice Movements
Throughout history, Black women have been the backbone of social justice movements.
The Black Women’s Executive Directors Program supports Black women-led racial and social justice organizations that are paving the path toward equity. It offers leaders sustained general operating support, peer community, holistic leadership development, and wellness resources.
A Strategy for Movement Survival
Black women’s labor, vision, and care have always sustained social and racial justice movements. Yet, these dedicated leaders face chronic underinvestment in addition to racial and gender oppression.
The Black Women’s Executive Directors Program addresses these injustices and answers the call for philanthropy to better support front-line leaders. Through this three-year initiative, RWJF is supporting Black women-led organizations by investing in their leaders’ visibility, wellbeing, and sustainability.
This program connects a cohort of 10 leaders from across the nation for greater longevity and collective impact. When we resource Black women leaders in a way that honors their expertise and supports their lived experiences, we fuel systemic change.
How the Program Operates
3-Year Grants to Organizations
Providing flexible, long-term funding, not project-based restrictions
Cohort Model
Fostering a community of shared leadership and collective care
Wellbeing and Healing
Integrating rest, renewal, and wellness into leadership support
Direct Funder Engagement
Expanding funding opportunities and networks of support
Collaborative Design
Modeling collective leadership through a partnership between RWJF, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), and re:power
Cohort of Founders and Founding Successors
Supporting the unique needs of leaders of new organizations
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0.5%
Only 0.5% of U.S. foundation funding goes to Black women and girls.
— Pocket Change: How Women and Girls of Color Do More with Less
The Inaugural Cohort
- Brittany Alston, Philly Black Worker Project
- Kayla Gore, My Sistah’s House
- Markasa Tucker‑Harris, African American Roundtable
- Ashley Nickens, SISTORIES
- Briana Perry, Healthy & Free Tennessee
- Erica Perry, Southern Movement Committee
- Shani Peters, The Black School
- jasmine Sankofa, Movement for Family Power
- Bridgette “Bri” Simpson, Barred Business
- Christian Snow, Law for Black Lives
Program Partners
The Black Women’s Executive Directors Program is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program co-created with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and re:power.
About BOLD:
BOLD is a national leadership training program for Black social justice organizers.
BOLD’s programs are designed to help rebuild Black social justice infrastructure in order to organize Black communities more effectively and re-center Black leadership in the U.S. social justice movement. Over the past seven years, BOLD has helped spark a renaissance in Black organizing and has trained over 300 Black organizers, many of whom are leading current struggles for racial equity and social justice.
re:power
About re:power: re:power is dedicated to building a liberated multi-racial democracy.
Through training and strategic support to leaders and organizations, re:power is building a critical mass of social justice movements that embody the ideology and practice of liberatory organizing, an organizing practice that is pro-Black and grounded in community, collective action, and abundance.