Cultivating Courageous Leaders Across Oregon

Together, we’re building what Oregon needs most right now: a movement of leaders rooted in collaboration, empathy, and courage.

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Our Programs

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    Turn Up Your Voice

    Taking Action for Community Change (Rural Leaders Program). A collaboration with Rural Development Initiatives to engage rising community leaders from across the state in exploring dimensions of power.

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    NEW Leadership Oregon

    For 24 years, NEW Leadership Oregon has brought together cohorts of college students to explore leadership. Our current program is a 6-month fellowship co-designed with our participants to meet their development needs.

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    Gender, Leadership & Policy

    Focused on intersectional social issues impacting the quality of life for women and gender-expansive people in Oregon. Our 2025 learning theme was the Care Giving Crisis and Care Economy.

Turn Up Your Voice: Taking Action for Community Change

A collaboration between the Center and Rural Development Initiatives (RDI) uniquely curated for rural women and gender-expansive community leaders. Over the last three years, we have engaged 75 participants from 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties.

This learning community has been a unique opportunity to bring together changemakers who may not otherwise have met, to catalyze cross-sector pollination through building trust-centered relationships and connections to the Oregon State Legislature.

Our curriculum is built to explore dimensions of power and how they intersect to make changes in rural communities possible.

Participants are invited to engage in a hybrid learning experience comprised of five sessions. The first three sessions take place virtually followed by an overnight learning experience in Salem Oregon and a cumulating virtual debrief. This program is an emergent initiative and we are excited to engage alumni to co-create how we continue to build this network to meet the needs of rural leaders and their communities.

We are excited for our April 15 alumni reunion at the 2026 Regards to Rural Conference in Bend Oregon.

Stay tuned for 2026 program information!

NEW Leadership Oregon

Since 2003, NEW Leadership® Oregon (NLO) has engaged over 800 participants from 36 Oregon colleges and universities.

NLO is an annual multi-session, six-month program curated for Oregon college students. NLO is open to any student enrolled at a college or university in Oregon. NLO is an inclusive, intersectional feminist leadership program designed to inspire participants to identify and hone the skills they need to lead in any context — in their community, within the nonprofit sector, in the boardroom, in politics, at home, as activists, and anywhere else their leadership is needed (which is everywhere!)

We believe there are many different paths toward leadership, and we collaborate with facilitators, speakers, and mentors with a wide range of lived leadership experiences. NEW Leadership® Oregon is modeled after National Education for Women’s Leadership®, the award-winning leadership program designed by the renowned Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

2025 Program Themes:

  • Understanding Systems Change – understanding who holds power, how decisions are made, and what barriers prevent progress.

  • Equity & Intersectionality in Policymaking – Integrating diverse perspectives into leadership and decision-making.

  • Career Development & Transitions – Navigating the shift from academia to full-time professional work.

  • Networking, Interdependence & Collaboration – Building strategic relationships and collective power.

  • Leadership Skills & Tools – Cultivating human-centered leadership approaches.

  • Reflection & Learning Practices – Encouraging personal growth through art, journaling, and mindfulness.

Stay tuned for 2026 program information!

Gender, Leadership & Policy

In collaboration with community leaders, organizations and issue area decision makers we will creates a cohort-based learning community to explore intersectional policy issues impacting the quality of life for women, girls and gender-expansive people.

Our 2025 theme explored our nation’s caregiving crisis and caregiving economy while focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and other categories of difference, in order to enact systems-level change. Together, we built a curated learning community based on the needs of this year’s participants that is both emergent and iterative. We invited participants to be active participants in shaping their personal agency and leadership through their experience.

2025 Program Themes

This opportunity was offered as a hybrid learning experience, including: 2 in-person days in Portland, 4 virtual sessions, an experiential learning trip to Washington, DC and 2 in-person days in Salem Oregon. We engaged 14 leaders from 6 counties to explore the following:

  • The Landscape for Change: Building Power, Organizing, Community Building

  • Caregiving Policy Development and Execution at different levels of government

  • The Care Economy and Oregon’s Budget Landscape and Solutions

  • The Personal is Political: Understanding Our Role in Movement-Building and Becoming a Resilient Leader

Thank you to the March Strategies team for co-designing our inaugural curriculum and For All Families Oregon for your partnership in programming. facilitation and co-leading our experiential learning in Washington DC.

Stay tuned for 2026 program information!

The Center for Women’s Leadership strives to meet the needs of rising women and gender expansive leaders across our region by offering curated learning communities. These communities catalyze learning and growth around leadership practices that are explicitly anti-racist; grounded in intersectional feminist and queer ways of thinking, feeling, and doing; embracing of radical imagination; and dedicated to creating a culture of relationality and care among participants and in our communities.

CWL's mission has always been about impact beyond a single institution. As Oregon’s political and economic landscape shifts, the demand for accessible, community-driven leadership development has never been more urgent. Currently, women hold just 15% of leadership positions across sectors statewide. Programs that build civic and professional leadership capacity are declining, while the need for leaders grounded in empathy, equity, and collaboration continues to grow. We are ready to build upon our 23-year history and begin our new chapter as a community-based leadership incubator rising to be responsive to needs across the state.

CWL's impact is measurable and far-reaching

Over the last 23 years we have engaged 1,000s of program participants, mentors, boards, and supporters. We work with rising community leaders who reflect the diversity of our state at the intersections of race, gender, and other categories of difference by centering them in co-designed programming.

23

Year of Service

24 of 36

Counties Served

1,000+

Program Alumni

Grow with Us

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    Attend an Event

    Experience leadership in action. Workshops and conversations with changemakers, our events are designed to spark connection, build skills, and support women at every stage of their journey.

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Invest in women and gender-expansive leaders shaping Oregon’s future

Your support fuels accessible, relationship-centered leadership programs that strengthen communities.

What Your Gift Supports

  • Access

    We reduce financial barriers so leaders can participate fully — covering lodging, meals, childcare, transportation, and access needs like ASL and Spanish interpretation.

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    Reciprocity

    We believe in non-extractive leadership development. Facilitators and partners are compensated, acknowledged, and amplified.

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    Community Impact

    Our program alumni apply their lived experience to real challenges. From policy change to rural economic development.

Have questions about our work or want to learn more about how you can support women's leadership?

We'd love to connect.

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