Emerging Leaders

The Emerging Leaders Network is a national leadership development and movement-building network that trains and supports emerging community activists who are working to advance reproductive health, rights, and justice.
Read the application guidelines
Apply by june 1

Read Tumbleweeds Volume 1

The Emerging Leaders Network successfully relaunched with a new cohort in 2025 following a strategic re-design of the model, curriculum, and brand to better meet the needs of today’s reproductive justice movement. The 2025 cohort created an anthology that captures their learnings and expertise. Check out Tumbleweeds Volume 1: The Collected Works of Collective Power’s 2025-2026 Emerging Leaders.

The Emerging Leaders Network is a year-long program to support emerging leadership in the reproductive justice movement. 

About the Program

The Emerging Leaders Network is a national leadership development and movement-building fellowship program that trains and supports emerging community activists who are working to advance reproductive health, rights, and justice. The Emerging Leaders Network creates opportunities for deep and meaningful collaboration across the reproductive justice movement.

The Emerging Leaders Network is a year-long fellowship. Fellows will learn from others working in the movement, as well as from their cohort of 15-20 fellows to support relationship building among emerging reproductive justice leaders and to create deeper opportunities for sharpening skills and coalition building.

Who is the Emerging Leaders Network for?

The Emerging Leaders Network is for dynamic emerging organizers who have a desire to grow their leadership skills, learn from other emerging leaders, take part in movement building conversations, and build coalitions and collaborations that propel the movement forward.

Qualifications:

  • You have 3-5 years of experience of movement organizing experience in your organization or community.
  • You are not currently enrolled in an undergraduate program.
  • You are ideally organizing within a rural, small-town, and place-based context.
  • You are working within the reproductive justice movement or intersecting social justice movements.

In addition, you are ready to level-up and engage in deeper political conversation and strategy, develop your leadership skills, and are ready to learn from other Emerging Leaders fellows.

Program History

Since 1999, the program has helped over 1,000 activists from 275 organizations to strengthen their advocacy skills, develop new strategic approaches, and make valuable connections to peers in other organizations and fields. Past participants have included recent graduates in their first jobs, emerging leaders at direct action and reproductive justice advocacy groups, new and advancing staff at large reproductive rights organizations, and new directors of community-based organizations. We believe you can be an emerging leader at any stage of life or at any age, and we welcome people of all ages and backgrounds to apply.


Application & Schedule

Applications for the 2026-27 cohort are open.

Apply by June 1.

View the Schedule & FAQ’s Apply

A Black, queer visionary feminist, I have been organizing individuals and organizations toward liberation at the local, national, and international levels for more than a decade. . . What makes CLPP unique is its intentionality around leadership development – they’re creating a space for both new and experienced leaders with a focus on skill building and issues. It’s a rite of passage – all movement leaders have been through CLPP’s programs.
– Paris Hatcher, founder, Black Feminist Future