About
Launched in the fall of 2013, the NLLI grew out of a partnership between the AFL-CIO, The Worker Institute at Cornell, and top labor educators from Harvard, Rutgers, Berkeley, Oregon, UALE, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, and the Rockwood Leadership Institute. The vision of the Initiative is to address the strategic challenges facing the labor movement in the 21st century. The Initiative helps top labor leaders acquire and refine the knowledge, skills, and qualities needed to lead when unions and working people are subjected to coordinated and well-funded attacks. The Initiative provides a space for unions, worker justice organizations, and labor educators to learn innovative approaches to developing the critical core of leaders our movement needs.
The National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI) aims to create a community of leaders dedicated to their individual and mutual learning and development, strengthening and transforming the organizations they lead and building a broad progressive movement that empowers working people in a rapidly changing world.
Program
Participants must be nominated and sponsored by their organizations. Nominees are in senior elected or staff positions in their organizations, with extensive leadership and oversight responsibilities for major areas of work.
The NLLI curriculum consists of three 5-day intensive retreats spread out over one year, held in different regions of the U.S.
Three thematic concentrations will be repeated throughout all the retreats, though each retreat will focus primarily on one. The three interdependent domains of leadership are
- Personal Qualities of Leadership
- Leading and Transforming Your Organization
- Building an Inclusive and Dynamic Movement
Intensive follow-up with faculty, field application, peer coaching, and network- building will take place continuously between sessions.
Videos
10th Cohort
In November 2023, the National Labor Leadership Initiative (NLLI) proudly welcomed its 10th cohort. Launched in 2014, NLLI was created to provide union leaders with the necessary skills and tools to address the complex challenges faced by unions and the labor movement. The 10th class of the NLLI program is a significant milestone for the Worker Institute. What began as an experiment of leadership training has become a premier and transformative labor leadership program for union leaders in the United States and Canada. Additionally, the program has played a crucial role in helping union leadership face some of the most significant challenges in recent American history.
The class has already helped union leaders deepen their relationships with each other, explore the challenges of leadership in the current climate, and develop new strategies for success. The launch of the 2023-2024 NLLI class also included a panel where participants discussed what growth means in today's labor movement. They also discussed how to talk to members about leading through times of incredible divisiveness and how to build relationships across the movement between unions and non-unionized workforces. The current cohort brings together leaders of different unions and organizations across different sectors, including trade, education, service industry, climate justice, and healthcare.
Latest News
See all Latest News about the NLLI
Faculty and Staff
- Senior Extension Associate
Elaine Kim spent over a decade on the leadership team at 32BJ SEIU, the largest property service union in the country, representing janitors, security officers, airport workers, and residential wor
- Program Coordinator
Sherrie Morales is a Program Coordinator for the Worker Institute at Cornell/ILR. She has worked for Cornell/ILR in NYC for over 27 years with various departments within ILR.
- Interim Executive Director, The Worker Institute
- Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative
Kathleen Mulligan is the Director of Labor Leadership Programs, and Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative, at Cornell University’s ILR School.
- Senior Extension Associate
Tamara Robinson [she/her] is an organizational development consultant, coach, labor leader, and activist with 16 years of experience.
Contact
For more information about the National Labor Leadership Initative, please contact Sherrie Morales at sm92@cornell.edu or 212.340.2827.