Build the Future

of Equitable Work with Us

We help organizations create structures & systems that support our humanity and our best work.

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Do You Recognize These Leadership Challenges?

You have hired multiple Directors of DEI

. . . but retention remains a challenge

You want good working relationships

. .  . but employees struggle with interpersonal conflict.

You have organizational values

. . . but your employees don’t embody them.

You want collaboration

. . . but your employees are working in silos.

Your leaders look for quick fixes

. . . but don’t grapple with difficult decisions.

Younger employees ask for a social justice stand

. . . but you don’t want to wade into politics.

You are making an effort to hire for representation

. . . but People of Color and women continue to leave.

“We’ve been so blessed to be able to partner with Leverage to Lead. They’ve been vital to our organization’s stability and future. Our work together came at a time when we needed help driving alignment with our values. Leverage to Lead brought the level of training and a path forward we needed, and in a way that included different perspectives and experiences.” 

Alison Brunner

CEO, Law Foundation of Silicon Valley

How We're Building the Future of Equitable Work

We Make the Invisible Visible

By surfacing previously invisible beliefs, biases, values, behaviors, feelings, exclusions, and inequities, we help you cut through external noise, get clear on how your values are operating, decide on what values you need, and develop human-centered structures, policies, and practices that support people in embracing and embodying the values.

Changing the future
everyone has biases

A Human-Centered Foundation

Our tools and practices help leaders and employees be human together so they can create and innovate together.

We help your people build relationships and trust; manage discomfort, uncertainty, and disagreement; lead with empathy; increase resilience; examine perspective and beliefs; uncover, confront, and disrupt our conscious and unconscious biases; meet challenges with compassion; maintain high standards; and hold every person’s humanity with deep regard.

We Practice with You

We know this work is hard because we’re doing it with you.

Our team continuously practices and evolves our approach, prototyping and assessing our work by doing the work ourselves. In our team meetings and during regular professional development, we hold our decisions and behaviors up to our values; examine and excavate our values; practice deep listening; hold ourselves accountable to our agreements; disrupt our biases and storytelling; and examine our structures for accountability, feedback, communication, meetings, performance management, finances, and more.

who can get certified
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We See Culture Holistically

We help leaders navigate change and growth with a tool called The Leader’s Helm, so you see the big picture as you live in the day-to-day of transformation. When you understand how the major components of your culture impact each other and the organization at large, you can make decisions with more confidence and a whole-organization perspective.

“As a remote team, it was a gift that Leverage to Lead helped us truly be able to listen to each other and put ourselves in our colleague’s shoes for the first time in a long time. I’ve noticed more empathy and active listening in meetings. There’s more openness and sharing. My hope for the future is that the groundwork we laid continues to grow. Leverage to Lead opened up a new world of collaboration possibilities for our team.”

Bridget S.

Eden I&R Inc.

Our Clients

We’ve guided organizations from cultures of fear and conformity to ones that welcome our full humanity and leverage differences. Our tools empower organizations to engage with and benefit from diversity, not shy away from it.

LFSV
Google
Eden
Hannah Andersson Logo
Arevon
GGNP
Lowell HS
Impact Fund
World Savvy
O&G
Global Citizen Year

We’ve worked across many industries, including:

  • Law Firms
  • Education Technology
  • Independent Schools
  • Environmental Justice
  • Renewable Energy
  • Software
  • Medical Technology
  • Retail
  • National Parks
  • Community Housing
  • Boards
  • Strategic Planning
  • Nonprofits
  • Religious Institutions
  • Arts

How We Partner with You

In partnering with you and your team through challenges and celebrations, our commitment is to:

 

  • Practice the work we ask you to do.
  • Model our values, commitments, and working agreements as we bring awareness to the dynamics we observe.
  • Listen deeply and ensure we understand you in the way you want to be understood.
  • Co-create a way forward that feels safe and allows for the discomfort of disrupting our socialization.

What We Ask of Our Partners

We understand our work brings discomfort and requires the willingness to take risks. We ask that our partners:

 

  • Commit the time required to engage in our work together.
  • Are willing to participate fully, practice new skills, and hold open dialogue.
  • Hold the humanity of their team and our team with compassion.
  • Learn and grow with us.

Begin your transformation toward a more inclusive and equitable workplace where diversity can thrive.

Read Our Blog

Reframing Uncertainty

We’re no strangers to working through difficult or uncertain times. But the current civic, economic, and personal upheaval we are experiencing can leave us feeling overwhelmed and despairing. All of our training, experience, and skills couldn’t have prepared us for...

Deep Listening with Jennifer and MJ

MJ Mathis joined Leverage to Lead as an Associate Coach this past March. You’ve already seen her voice added to our biweekly newsletters, and we’ve been busy with corporate trainings and DEI work across many different spaces. In July, we’re offering a session called...

Power, Influence, and the Limits of Comfort

“Power is not influence. Power is when you have the ability to make change . . . Being speaker of the House, that’s real power.” -Nancy Pelosi We hear the word influence a lot these days. Celebrities on Instagram, CEOs lobbying in Washington, high-profile political...

A Space for Our Vulnerable Selves

“We are saying, if you have money and you’re white, you can do well here. If you’re not, good luck to you.” – Dr. Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the former acting director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)....

Our Boundaries Strengthen Our Connections

If we’re learning anything right now, it’s that we are all connected more deeply than we realized or wanted to admit. COVID-19 is shining a light onto all the ways we have long ignored or denied those connections, even with humans from across the globe. Our task going...

Leading Through Uncertainty

What Showing Up Looks Like Now At Leverage to Lead, we help women and people of color show up with agency and authenticity. But what does that look like in the midst of a crisis? Our civic, professional, and personal lives are undergoing unprecedented change. What...

I Cried at Target

"Assume others are doing the best they can." – Brené Brown An Overwheling Kindness Like many people in our country, we were almost out of toilet paper. We've been making what feels like dangerous daily excursions to find some in our area. I knew that if we were going...

What Holds Us Together?

Whatever your industry or your location, news of COVID-19 or the virus itself is no doubt impacting some part of your job, daily activities, and perhaps your sense of security and certainty. Here in Northern California, schools are closed and many are working from...

The Disruption of Storytelling

The act of disrupting bias comes in many forms. Most often, we tend to think of the vocal ones—speaking out in a meeting or verbally challenging a stereotype. The articles in this series explore the many and various ways we can all participate in disrupting bias, with...

The Disruption of Listening

The act of disrupting bias comes in many forms. Most often, we tend to think of the vocal ones—speaking out in a meeting or verbally challenging a stereotype. The articles in this series explore the many and various ways we can all participate in disrupting bias, with...