Taking It To the Next Level
Just last month, 37 CEOs and senior program leaders representing 18 of the nation’s leading postsecondary access and success organizations came together for a unique, three-day gathering in Washington, D.C.
Building on the foundational relationships that many had established through our leadership cohorts and organizational improvement programming over the past year, the in-person convening was dedicated to knowledge sharing and intensely collaborative program design work. Over the course of our time together, leaders co-created a series of collective action initiatives designed to support students as they navigate an increasingly uncertain college and career landscape, while helping post-secondary institutions adapt to address the expectations and realities of a new generation.
Collective Action Built on Authentic Community
The reimagined Alliance is designed on the premise that to truly meet the deep and urgent needs facing young people right now, we need to both strengthen organizations and launch new, cross-sector collaborations to spur innovation and practice change.
To date, more than 100 organizations and over 500 leaders have joined our Alliance Community. In addition to the immediate value members gain through participation in our organizational improvement programming, leaders forge mutually-supportive relationships grounded in authenticity, candor, and radical support. By investing early in establishing sustainable, replicable habits of working together, we’re poised to address some of the greatest challenges facing the sector right now—challenges that are bigger than any one organization can address on its own.
“This felt like NASA for college success.”
Coming out of the convening, leaders shared reflections and affirmations for the ways in which the Alliance community serves to support their work and the sector as a whole.
“This convening was a long time coming and is needed now more than ever. The college access and success space is ripe for more collaboration and less siloed work. We need to embrace a culture of collective impact that will allow us to share bright spots, challenges, and learnings across peer organizations and co-design solutions that are too challenging to tackle alone.”
“Gathering together and having dedicated time with our peer college access and success orgs was an invaluable experience. Not only were we able to connect, learn from each other and work on collaborative and strategic work in the moment but we were also able to form connections that will serve us outside of that place and time. Thank you to APA for creating this space and opportunity to set aside the day-to-day tasks and allow leaders to align and strategize. It was a beautiful thing.”
“Being a part of a convening with so many dynamic leaders doing incredible work in this space was a real game-changer for our organization. That the space was marked by candor, kindness, honest inquiry, and shared mission led to us accomplishing a great deal of knowledge sharing and paved the way for future large-scale collaboration.”
“This felt like NASA for college success. The brightest college success minds in the country getting together to do the math around the toughest postsecondary success challenges we face in the sector.”
The Work Ahead
While we’ve already accomplished more in two years than we could have imagined when launching this work, our greatest opportunities for impact are still ahead. We’re excited to share more about these collective action initiatives in the months ahead, as each has the potential to dramatically improve outcomes in the communities our Alliance serves. And we’re grateful to each of our extraordinary leaders for committing themselves to this community and our collective work.
To our members who joined us in DC last month (and in Colorado last December) – thank you for carving out time to be in community with us.
For more information about our collective action work, please reach out to Andrea Glauber. For inquiries about joining the Alliance, please reach out to Sadiq Ali.