Program Areas

The need to rebuild the ecosystem of Black leadership is a fundamental imperative of the Institute. The intersection of the multiple crises of the Black socioeconomic environment with the policy environment of the Chicago metropolitan region and the state of Illinois presents the Institute with a range of policy and organizational opportunities principal among these is the development of a Leadership Center.  Chicago’s long history of Black leadership has alternated between responding to headlines, waiting for crises to reach their tipping point, or engaging in serious and comprehensive research and assessment of the efficacy of our region's key institutions and organizations around a host of indicators. 
The Institute’s Leadership Center will be both a development center and a space in which community leaders engage their counterparts in honest discourse about their struggles to overcome the systemic and institutional racism in the sectors in which they work. As a safe space for Black leaders, the Center will allow veteran and emerging leaders to “[examine] the challenges they themselves face in creating systemic policy, institutional and systemic change.” A key outcome will be training and support for young Black policy professionals.