Solidarity & Resilience: The Role of Collaborative Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that exacerbates our social, political, and economic challenges, and that disproportionately affects communities who are already vulnerable. Leaders of multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral collaboratives have meaningful insights to share for responding to, learning from, and building upon the challenges and opportunities of this moment.

This panel discussion, facilitated by Peter Nicholson, of Foresight Design and featuring members of their Collaborative Leaders’ Learning Circle, will address the following key themes:

• Crisis Response: lessons from collaboratives in coordinating rapid, meaningful, culturally competent response across entities and agencies.
• Trust Building: what this moment reveals about fractured trust in our region, and what collaboratives have learned about cultivating and/or rebuilding trust within communities and across communities, between communities and institutions/decision-makers, and across disconnected sectors.
• Systems Change: what moments such as this reveal about our systems, and ideas about leveraging this moment to create systems that are more equitable and sustainable.
• Sustaining Resources: what this moment reveals about chronic challenges for resourcing and sustaining this work, and what may be needed for a more vibrant future that builds upon the successes of existing collaboratives.

Panelists will include: Sarah Coulter, Calumet Collaborative; Ghian Foreman, Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative; Luis Gutierrez, Latinos Progresando; Roberto Requejo, Elevated Chicago; Jose Rico, Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Greater Chicago; and Tyler Strom, Illinois Agri-Food Alliance.