Alabama Forward: Leadership Development Pipeline Program
Quire designed a leadership development program to grow and support young BIPOC leaders across Alabama.
Alabama Forward is a statewide civic engagement table advancing pro-democracy efforts and racial equity in Alabama.
Alabama Forward sought to learn how to better support emerging leaders in the nonprofit, political, and grassroots sectors and create a leadership pipeline aligned with its values.
The Brief
The challenge:
Leadership opportunities in Alabama were fragmented, inaccessible, and lacked coordination. Young BIPOC leaders in particular faced limited, disconnected options for growth and development.
The Strategy
We proposed a research-informed leadership development hub that would consolidate existing programs, foster collaboration between organizations, and address gaps in the leadership journey.
The Research:
Quire led a two-phase qualitative research process, including a statewide landscape analysis, interviews with sector leaders, surveys of BIPOC leaders, and collaborative workshops with stakeholders. By positioning our research plan in relation to leaders’ lived experiences, we were able to identify key factors in a leadership journey.
THE RESULTS
We delivered a full program plan with 15 concept sketches mapped to a leadership journey framework, supported by feedback from dozens of leaders across the state. This plan provided a roadmap and three possible models for a leadership development pipeline program. Through designing a cohort hub model, we were able to address Alabama Forward’s goal of not replicating prior efforts, but rather consolidating resources and streamlining the process of developing progressive leaders in the state.
The Impact:
Alabama Forward is currently pursuing partnerships with national organizations to bring the program to life. The framework is shaping leadership development across the state - just as the Supreme Court ruled in favor of our client (Allen v. Milligan) in a landmark voting rights case.
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