Sharing Leadership: A Conversation with Sheerine Alemzadeh

Is it healthy for an organization to have leadership centralized in one person — the executive director? Is leadership development “one size fits all”? Sheerine Alemzadeh and Karla Altmayer turned the conventional model of nonprofit leadership on its head when they co-founded Healing to Action, a Chicago-based nonprofit that engages low wage workers in combatting sexual violence. In this episode, Alemzadeh takes our listeners into her organization’s journey, where they tackled: - Broadening leadership from one central leader to a co-directorship model. - Sharing power and leadership with their constituents — survivors of sexual violence. - Finding new ways to tap these survivors’ unique strengths, recognizing that traditional organizing fails to account for their traumatic experiences.

Sheerine recommended two resources: Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html Trauma Stewardship, Laura Lipsky https://traumastewardship.com/laura-van-dernoot-lipsky/