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.
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Faculty and Staff
Elaine Kim
- Senior Extension Associate
Sherrie Morales
- 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.
Kathleen Mulligan
- Director of Labor Leadership Programs
Kathleen Mulligan is the Director of Labor Leadership Programs, and Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative, at Cornell University’s ILR School.
Contact
For more information about the National Labor Leadership Initative, please contact Sherrie Morales at sm92@cornell.edu or 212.340.2827.