Impact
It is well documented that leaders of color face unique challenges while at the helm of social change organizations. Pervasive white supremacist practices and structural barriers throughout the sector continue to harm and curtail the impact of all leaders of color. The ability to win systemic change on social justice issues depends on healthy, strong, and sustainable leaders and organizations.
Some of the obstacles include insufficient or absent (a) institutional support for holistic and culturally relevant leadership development, (b) resources on trauma-informed care as well as resiliency and rejuvenation opportunities, and (c) support for anti-oppressive, decolonial, liberatory, and re-indigenizing frameworks and practices in our work. As a result, leaders of color spend precious energy overcoming trauma and internalized oppression; addressing division, conflict and horizontal hostility; negotiating gender, race, and class power differentials; and navigating scarcity and competition.
As individuals living at the intersections of oppressed identities, we are poised to lead systemic change for the most impacted communities that we both represent and are accountable to. In this moment, it is more critical than ever to nurture a space that effectively meets the challenges of BIPOC executive and movement leadership.
TLC rises to this moment by reimagining and expanding what is possible for us. We know that the Colorado ecosystem will look and feel differently when its leadership includes well-resourced BIPOC who can bring the fullness of our visions to bear.
The TLC Network is a growing and thriving community and leaders continuously create the conditions for positive change across a myriad of social justice issues impacting countless Colorado communities.
In 2025 for instance, 82 organizations within the TLC Network are addressing a multitude of social justice issues, including: Arts & Cultural Organizing (10%), Civic Engagement / Electoral (14%), Climate & Environmental Justice (16%), Disability Justice (6%), Economic Justice (22%), Education Justice (17%), Food Sovereignty & Justice (14%), Gender & LGBTQ Justice (8%), Health Equity & Healing Justice (20%), Housing Justice (16%), Im/migrant Rights & Justice (23%), Indigenous & Land Rights & Sovereignty (7%), Law Enforcement Accountability / Criminal Justice / Survivor Justice (10%), Racial Justice (35%), Reproductive & Birth Justice (11%), Wealth Building & Redistribution (8%), and Workers Rights (6%).
In the same year, the TLC Network reported 988,121 individuals mobilized through digital organizing and 31,066 individuals engaged in direct action. Further, groups positively impacted the 7-county metro region and 31 rural counties, or a combined reach covering 59% of the counties and impacting 93% of the population in Colorado.
Further, the tremendous impact TLC has on BIPOC leaders, their interpersonal connections, their organizations and the larger ecosystem is evident through survey and interview data. Examples of transformation at the four levels where the TLC experience sparks change – individual, interpersonal, organizational, and at the ecosystem level – from the most recently completed TLC Fellowship, Cohort 4, include:
1. Individual Impact
- 100% of fellows agree or strongly agree that, overall, the content of the TLC Fellowship curriculum supported their leadership development.
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that, overall, the various facilitators of programming were responsive to their needs as TLC fellows.
- 91% of fellows agree or strongly agree that, overall, the facilitators understood the context of leading as a BIPOC person in Colorado.
- 100% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship shifted their relationship to healing.
“I do want to share that I am now a confident human being, with a defined intention of what I want to do for the future and how I want to grow and how I want to support my community and organization so that together we can make systematic changes.”
“This isn’t a year-long commitment, but a lifelong one. My entire life has been changed. My past and future lives are thankful.”
“I’m just an all around better, softer, more forgiving, rest-loving, more open-to-receiving person. Thanks TLC!”
2. Interpersonal Impact
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship supported MUTUAL TRUST between TLC Fellows.
- 100% agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship supported RESPECT between TLC Fellows.
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship supported healing of tension or conflict between TLC fellows.
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship supported new partnerships and collaborations between TLC Fellows.
- 90% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship shifted their relationship to interdependence.
“I greatly value the training on Right Relationship and how to address conflict in a way that is holistic and respectful of all individuals, centering on returning to a right relationship with each other. Witnessing the role-playing was particularly helpful as it provided a real-life example of addressing conflict in a healthy way.”
“I feel like this is only the beginning of revolutionary impact to shift the social justice movement through allowing people to come together to really see and hear each other and build bridges to work together where our impact can be greater.”
3. Organizational Impact
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship transformed how they show up as a leader for my organization.
- 90% of fellows agree or strongly agree that the TLC Fellowship gave them access to tools, practices, concepts, facilitators, healers, vendors, and other resources that I can apply in my organization.
“There were a lot of amazing role models in the room to learn from! TLC has given me a whole new vocabulary and attitude that I now use at work. I enjoy using language that is softer, more vulnerable and inclusive, yet firm and assertive. There were lots of specific things that we learned but the most enduring thing that I will take away is the soft skills and less tangible ways of being, speaking, and organizing that I learned from other participants and leaders in the space.”
“My relationships and work within my own org would be so much worse off without the skills that TLC has helped me build!”
“TLC has brought so many gifts to my organization by holding healing space and offering coaching that has propelled us all forward in our leadership and healing practices.”
“Because both my ED and I were in the program, I feel that the way we navigate our community partnerships and our community in general feels less isolating. I also feel that separately we use TLC practices for ourselves and are able to work better together because of it.”
4. Ecosystem Impact
- 91% of fellows agree or strongly agree that TLC Fellowship is creating a culture to TRANSFORM LEADERSHIP in the Colorado social justice ecosystem.
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that TLC Fellowship is creating a culture to TRANSFORM RELATIONSHIPS in the Colorado social justice ecosystem.
- 95% of fellows agree or strongly agree that TLC Fellowship is changing the NARRATIVE OF BIPOC LEADERSHIP in the Colorado social justice ecosystem.
“The conflict transformation practices can definitely impact our overall social justice movement ecosystem because we cannot win unless we are in ‘right’ (respectful, trust-based, justice-oriented) relationship with each other, and to build those relationships we need healthy ways to self-reflect and move through conflict.”
“Yes, if we all all apply the learning that we receive during this retreat and TLC as a whole. We can start to change the Social Justice ecosystem one person/one org at a time. Creating a system that is not grounded in white supremacy/capitalism informed non-profit culture.”
“Share growth practice and healing/resolution circles will fundamentally change the game in the social justice movement ecosystem.”