January 31, 2024
By: Ilana Coolidge
YW Boston Welcomes the LeadBoston Class of 2024
The LeadBoston Class of 2024 has officially kicked off a year of learning and growing. YW Boston is excited to welcome the 43 Boston professionals who are ready to tackle tough questions and take action to make Boston a more inclusive place for all to live and work.
This year’s LeadBoston cohort gathered for orientation at Fenway Park, where they heard from YW Boston President & CEO Beth Chandler, LB ’14, about her own experience in LeadBoston.
“I was a little skeptical about how much I’d learn in class since I’d spent over a decade in nonprofit work in Boston. Boy was that skepticism misplaced. I learned something almost every class from speakers and my fellow cohort members.”
LeadBoston is YW Boston’s signature leadership program. It meets organizations’ demand for more inclusive leadership by equipping mid- to senior-level professionals with the knowledge, skills, and network necessary to increase equity within their organizations and communities. Over the next 11 months, participants will learn from subject matter experts and each other, building skills that enable them to analyze the root causes of diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges faced today. The program will culminate with a commitment and development of a project that will drive equitable change within the participants’ organizations and communities.
The 2024 class features a broad range of professional experience, from nonprofits and the public sector to financial and academic institutions.
Dr. Anouska Bhattacharyya, Vice President of Programs at YW Boston, said of the new class:
“The LeadBoston Class of 2024 represent Greater Boston’s diversity: in sector, ethnicity, gender, age, disability status, and organizational prowess. They also represent how this diversity can come together, to learn from each other, develop their own inclusive leadership, and apply their collective expertise towards greater equity across the city. We celebrate them as they kick –off this journey!”
The Class of 2024 joins Boston’s largest network of inclusive leaders with alumni from over 30 years of programming.
About LeadBoston
Our signature leadership program, LeadBoston, supports all individual participants as they create and implement a leadership commitment. This leadership commitment is an action plan that confronts some of the systemic inequities they’ve learned about and that are showing up in their organization. This plan, and the collective LeadBoston experience, empowers leaders to create meaningful change in their workplaces, in their communities, and in the city of Boston itself. Staff work alongside alums for a year following the program to ensure participants have what they need to see their plan through. Click here to learn more.
