Listen to Jhumpa Bhattacharya and Aleah Rosario discuss the CalSAC Leadership Development Institute and the value of diversifying leadership to support and advance communities of color.

Aleah Rosario is the Director of Capacity Building Programs at the California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC), where she supports professionals and organizations in providing quality and affordable out-of-school time programs. She has also served CalSAC as an endorsed trainer, project leader, and chapter leader, and she is a graduate of CalSAC’s Leadership Development Institute (LDI) for Emerging Leaders of Color.
The mission of LDI is to equip emerging leaders of color in the early education and out-of-school time field with the training and experience they need to advance into higher leadership positions within their organization. This field includes educational programs like expanded learning, after-school programs, child care, early learning programs, and summer programs. LDI hopes to create more responsive programs, policies, and services that reflect the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the young people who attend these programs.
Established in 2012, LDI specifically works to support and strengthen leadership capacity and opportunities for people of color in order to address the stark disparity in racial and ethnic representation at executive levels in their field and the greater social sector. “We see, across the nonprofit field of the United States, there is a leadership gap,” shares Rosario. “I can count, often times on one hand, the number of people in these positions that are people of color. Only 16% of nonprofit executive leadership positions are held by people of color and only 14% of nonprofit boards are made up of people of color.”
Rosario and her colleagues at CalSAC know firsthand the value and benefits of diversifying leadership to better reflect, connect with, and support communities and constituencies. “We know that the folks who are most likely to be recipients of these services are mostly people of color,” explained Rosario. “Here’s our huge opportunity – diversify the field and leadership within these programs. The people who are working in these programs, serving the children and families who attend these programs, often times represent the students. They all live and work in the same community.”
LDI hopes to empower its graduates to diversify the broader workforce and both support and inspire younger generations with leaders who look like them and share similar backgrounds and experiences. “[As leaders] we’re making decisions that really impact the resources of their program, the policies that impact how their programs are run,” said Rosario. “If we’re not seeing the representation of the people that we’re serving in these decision-making processes…are we really serving the young people in the ways they need to be served?”
CalSAC worked closely with LeaderSpring to create the curriculum for the multifaceted program LDI provides. A key component of the program’s training helps participants understand the larger systemic forces behind the racial and economic inequities. “We can’t create these trainings and opportunities in a vacuum; we need to collaborate and understand how they [power and oppression] play out in people’s lives and working experiences,” explained Rosario. “In order to combat the discrimination gap and challenge our current systems, we must understand power, privilege, and oppression. This is just as important as understanding the difficult leadership and ma...