Since inception, The Westchester Community Foundation has operated as an affiliate of The New York Community Trust.
As part of our centennial celebrations, we are creating a single, unified organization to more powerfully advocate for our region with one voice.
We will still maintain our physical offices in Westchester with the same dedicated staff who will continue to honor and build upon our relationships with local nonprofits and communities.
You can now find us at: https://www.thenytrust.org/westchester/
The Westchester Index is at westchesterindex.org.
The New York Community Trust. For Westchester. Forever.
Last October, with support from WCF, a group of 20 nonprofit leaders from throughout Westchester gathered for training in the Art of Navigating Change.
The training was given by the Rockwood Leadership Institute, which provides workshops for leadership development, with a focus on diversity and social change. By design, participants were 90 percent leaders of color.
Working from the premise that Westchester’s nonprofits are rich in talent just below the executive level, the Foundation designed the program to help these future leaders to develop strategies and share resources.
Sherrisse-Lee Lewis, director of operations at Sustainable Westchester, said the event became a safe space for BIPOC participants to speak openly about difficult issues such as racism in the workplace, particularly in white-led or majority-white organizations.
“The facilitators were very upbeat and welcoming and considerate to the diverse group that was in the room,” Lewis said. “The thing that I walked away with was just being able to give space to myself, which is what so many of us don’t do. We don’t get a lot of time as leaders to sit back and just breathe and just be.”
Free from the pressure to “perform” as leaders of their organizations, participants shared best practices and learned from each other, and have formed a cohort of emerging leaders in the region.
2022 Rockwood Leadership Institute Cohort.
