Our Leadership Programs
A program designed to identify and recruit activists to the economic justice movement. The paid apprentices work for 3-12 months with unions and worker organizations across the nation.
The Emerging Leaders Cohort is designed for leaders in the early stages of their work.
The Executive Leadership Cohort is designed for more experienced senior leadership in unions and other worker justice organizations.
Our Mission
WILL Empower (WE) is a bold and ambitious initiative to identify, nurture, cultivate and convene a new generation of labor leaders. WE are women, nonbinary and gender-expansive people, who promote and model relationship building among new and non-traditional leaders. WE are committed to an intersectional gender and racial justice perspective and take a broad, multi-pronged approach to engage worker justice leaders at multiple stages and through interwoven programming.
WILL Empower is a national program jointly housed at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor in Washington, DC and Rutgers University’s Center for Innovation in Worker Organization in the School of Management and Labor Relations in New Jersey.
2025 CIWO Celebration & WILL Empower Awards Ceremony
Celebration Highlights
Nannie Helen Burroughs Award
Congratulations Stacy Davis Gates
Chicago Teachers Union
Edna Berger Young Courageous Leader Award
Congratulations Claudia Quiñones Torrico – United We Dream
Keynote Speaker: Vanessa Priya Daniel – Part I
Keynote Speaker: Vanessa Priya Daniel – Part II
Buy Vanessa Priya Daniel book “Unrig the Game. What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning” HERE
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