Leading Systems Change: Cohort Experiences
WithIn Collaborative offers customized cohort programs that empower leaders to drive meaningful change in their communities and organizations. Since 2015, we’ve designed and facilitated 11 leadership cohorts to tackle community challenges in our home state of California.
Our cohort experiences foster deep relationships rooted in trust and shared purpose. These connections become the foundation for collaborative learning, human-centered strategy, and innovative design work intended to surface new community-connected solutions to complex challenges.
Strengthen Community Leadership: WithIn’s Cohort-Based Approach
WithIn Collaborative stewards place-based and issue-based cohorts of leaders working across differences to transform their communities. These intensive programs cultivate networks of next-generation change-makers committed to building a more just and joyful future.
Blending systems thinking, human-centered design, equity frameworks, and coaching, each cohort equips participants with practical tools to lead community-centered change. Participants co-design and test solutions —many of which grow into lasting, impactful projects. Just as powerfully, the cohort itself becomes a sustained network of support and collaboration long after the program ends.
Connection is WithIn’s superpower. They create a sense of togetherness even when working with really tender topics around race, privilege and power in integrated settings and — because of that — they transform challenging, growth-edge conversations into compelling invitations that people are excited to lean into.
WithIn’s Cohort-Based Approach
WithIn has designed and facilitated 11 leadership cohorts to tackle community challenges in our home state of California. While each leadership cohort is unique, WithIn typically brings together 15–18 leaders for an intensive, months-long experience both in-person and online, focused on trust-building, collaborative leadership and project work.
We’ve been honored to support networks such as:
- Irvine New Leadership Network (NLN). Based in California’s Central Valley, NLN is a multiracial, cross-sector network cultivating a new generation of leaders to reimagine and reshape local systems. Read more about NLN’s journey in our book.
- First 5 Napa Early Childhood Network.This network brings together leaders from diverse fields, faiths, political beliefs, and racial backgrounds to co-create a more inclusive future for Napa County’s children and families.
