NHLI President’s Vision for 2009
NHLI welcomes the New Year with lots of exciting ideas and concrete plans for taking the organization to the next level.
NHLI is recognized as an award winning leadership program and a dynamic network of Latina professionals. Our vision for NHLI is to evolve into an insatitution that is recognized and respected by both the Latino community and mainstream opinion leaders as the most powerful national Latina network; a catalyst for and the voice of a growing “Latina movement” in the US; a leading clearinghouse for information on Latinas; and the premier Latina leadership program in the country.
Crucial to realizing this vision is a strong and visible alumnae network, innovative programs, and resources to assure long-term sustainability. Thus, we will refocus and redouble our investment in programs and services for alums. Our priority will be to re-engage our long-time graduates and keep engaged our more recent grads. To do this, we will create opportunities to bring back alumnae for cutting-edge seminars, mini-institutes and special convenings, and to heighten alumnae visibility. For example we are:
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Seeking funding to launch at least one mini-institute next year (a 2-3 day convening of 25-35 alumnae) to explore a particular topic or sector in depth.
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In discussion with a couple of potential funders to launch an international exchange program—to bring together alums with women leaders from Latin America (we’ll start in our hemisphere and then look at expanding our world). The model would be to take small groups of our alums overseas for a week-long learning experience with a group of leaders from the host country.
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Launching the NHLI Community Voices Project — by early Spring 2009, we will be announcing a Speakers Bureau to connect our alumnae with speaking opportunities and requests from corporations, government entities and community-based organizations; a Spokespersons Database to connect our alumnae to press requests related to the news cycle or special interests stories; and a Writers’ Group to train and encourage our alums to write op eds, which NHLI will help to place in national and local papers, and help them write letters to the editor to send to their local papers when an important issue to our communities arises. We will be also publishing some of our writers in our own NHLI newsletter.
In addition, we are in conversation with some potential funders to launch a new Institute for Latinas 24-34 years old with less than 10 years work experience. The Emerging Latina Professionals Institute, which we hope to start in the summer of 2009, will focus on career planning and other professional development and leadership skills to help our young Latinas advance into senior management and prominent leadership positions in their workplace and communities. This will allow us to better target our stellar Executive Leadership Training Program to the needs and interests of leaders over 35 seeking to advance to top executive positions.
We will be extending our Latinas Learning to Lead Institute to add more days and new components to the curriculum focusing on financial literacy and technology.
While we will continue our highly successful regional Latina Empowerment Conferences (and plan to be in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago in 2009), we will be revamping the format to make them more interactive and relevant to each host community, and keep participants connected after the event via a cyber network.
We are also approaching some new funders to start a new series of regional seminars: Financial Empowerment Conferences. These one-day seminars will focus on financial literacy topics such as managing credit/debt; financial planning including budgeting, saving and investing, building your asset base, and planning for retirement. With
Latinas playing an important role in consumer decisions for the family and with the rising number of Latina entrepreneurs, it’s critical to empower Latinas with tools and knowledge to manage their finances and achieve financial independence.
In 2009 we will explore ways to use technology to reach more and more Latinas. We will launch a Webinar series and hope to pilot three webinars the first year. The topics are still being determined (so this is your chance to weigh in — what would you like to see??). We anticipate collecting these webinars into a podcast library/archive that you can download from our website. Furthermore, we will launch a job bank to help more Latinas connect with good-paying jobs and promising opportunities.
It’s a long list and a tall order for 2009, but I believe that with your support we can do it!! |
