Workforce Leadership Network
Professional Development for Collaborative Workforce Leaders
across California.
Looking to expand your leadership capacity?
Complete an interest form today!
Workforce Leadership Network
The Workforce Leadership Network (WLN) provides diverse cross-sectoral cohorts of regional direct-service leaders, system leaders, and thought leaders across the field of workforce development the leadership and management skills and space to practice professional and personal growth, and develop meaningful networks to expand their capacity for impact within their teams, organizations and across the region.
Participants learn from 1) peer coaching, 2) experienced leadership and human centered-design facilitators, and 3) the broader Coro and regional community through Coro’s unique blend of experiential programming to stretch professional and management skill set through doing.
Interested Candidates – Click Here to Connect with Coro Staff to Learn More.
“We know that leadership is multifaceted and complex, but Coro taught me to understand the basics of what it means to lead successfully and has inspired me to be innovative and fearless by taking risks for a greater impact. Thank you Coro for making this world a better place for all of us!”
– Greta Setian (WLN 2022, SoCal Cohort), Human Services Administrator I Los Angeles County Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services
Over 50 hours of professional development programming from February to May meeting about twice per month. You can also expect about 5 to 10 hours spent outside of sessions on minimal Coro Conversation team group work and individual assignments.
The Programs are broken into three components:
- Leadership Retreats – Facilitated professional, management, and leadership development skill-building sessions.
- Coro Conversations – Cohort curated and led explorations of a challenge facing workforce development to stretch your professional and leadership development in a real-time setting. The teams select the topics.
- Peer Consultancy – An adaptive leadership peer coaching module to better diagnose a professional challenge and determine possible steps to test solutions.
Explore the 2023 WLN program calendar for the dates and times of these program components and the programs’ attendance policies.
WLN Provides cross-sectoral workforce development professionals with time-tested professional, leadership, and management skills, tools, and frameworks to advance your capacity to ignite action and impact within your organizations, teams and the region. WLN enables you to enhance your knowledge of the workforce development challenges and solutions (and the systems in which those challenges and solutions lie) by learning from your cohort of peers and leaders across the workforce development field. As a WLN participant and alumni, you will be invited into a cross-sectoral, regional and statewide community of collaborators.
The curriculum includes a wide range of professional skills-building:
- Adaptive Leadership
- Effective Communication and Advocacy
- Effective Inquiry and Critical Thinking
- Giving and Receiving Feedback
- Human Centered Design
- Interpersonal Leadership Styles™
- Managing Diverse Teams
- Negotiations
- Project Management Tools
- Public Narrative Frameworks
- Self-Awareness and Self-Management Tools
- Stakeholder Analysis and Coalition Building
The Coro Conversations serve as a vehicle for you to exercise leadership and management skills-building in a real-time setting, enhancing your knowledge of a workforce development challenge, while also practicing your professional development in an experiential way.
The program creates opportunities for you to bring your professional work into the program.
- Personal Leadership Commitment – you will name a specific area of growth you plan to practice over the course of the program.
- Peer Consultancy – the peer consultancy case enables you to bring into the program a real-world professional challenge you are seeking to address and to seek peer coaching from your cohort.
- Exploring Tough Interpretations – an adaptive leadership module that builds on Coro’s effective inquiry, giving and receiving feedback, and effective communication tools to illuminate your resistance to change.
- Post-Program Letter to Myself – a culminating activity whereby you reflect on your Personal Leadership Commitment and set professional goals for your continued growth after the end of the program.
Coro values diverse perspectives, identities, experiences, and world views represented in programming and cohorts; as such, WLN cohorts reflect the make-up of the region, representing a wide array of backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, and identities.
Of past participants, 100% agree that their participation in WLN helped them better understand the landscape of workforce development’s array of stakeholders.
Ideal WLN candidates are those who:
- work in, live in, and/or serve communities in Los Angeles County,
- have five (5) years or more of professional experience in the workforce development arena,
- hold an interest in innovating workforce development products and services to address the challenges facing job seekers and precariously employed Californians,
- view workforce development as a cross-sectoral field and are willing to communicate and collaborate with other stakeholders in and outside of the field,
- represent the broad and expansive backgrounds found in the communities they serve, and
- have the support they need from their organizations to fully commit to participating.
Multi-Perspective: You should be ready to engage productively with different perspectives and ready to engage in personal reflection.
Intentional Ambiguity: A signature characteristic of Coro programming is generating intentional ambiguity, which works to highlight your defaults, ignite your learning, and support you to lead and manage through uncertainty.
Learn by Doing: Coro views leadership as a practice; you should be ready to learn by doing with sessions as opportunities to lay the foundation; you will gain the most by taking the skills, tools, and frameworks and practicing/adapting them in your professional roles.
Thanks to generous support from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, and the Smidt Foundation, Coro Southern California is able to offer WLN to participants for a significantly reduced program fee of only $250.
The generous financial support of WLN’s sponsors and program fee covers:
- Over 60 hours of expert facilitated learning, materials, and instruction
- Interpersonal Leadership Styles™ assessment and materials
- Lunch during full-day, in-person sessions
- Access to Coro WLN GSuite platforms
- Periodic WLN community continuing learning and networking events
- Upon successful completion, a Coro WLN certificate of completion and access to the Coro community and special alumni-only events, programming, and platforms
You may incur additional incidental expenses due to your participation, such as transportation and parking costs and additional meals outside of those provided by Coro.
Employer and Sponsor Assistance: Most of past participants have secured financial support from their employers to cover the program fee. We encourage you to speak with your employer or to engage your network about potential support.
The 2022 WLN program delivered a range of skills in order to drive leadership development, systems thinking, human-centered design thinking, and problem diagnosis/solutions-seeking for challenges facing workforce development. Over the course of 15 sessions spanning February to May 2022, the 2022 cohort learned and applied a range of professional development tools, frameworks, and skill-building.
Broken into smaller teams within their respective Southern and Northern California regions, the cohort planned and led five Coro Conversations. Coro Conversations worked to 1) expand the participants’ learning about civic challenges that are uniquely impacting the field of workforce development, 2) practice the professional and leadership skills, tools, and frameworks explored in the program’s sessions, and 3) utilize the Coro framework of effective inquiry in real-time settings. In their small teams, participants identified a current workforce development civic challenge and then designed an experiential afternoon of learning for the regional cohort that 1) connected them to the topic and 2) provided an opportunity to practice developing our skills in leadership and inquiry.
The 2022 WLN Lookbook is a visual representation of these Coro Conversations.
To view Coro’s 2020 Workforce Leadership Network Lookbook, click here.
- A Place Called Home
- Brasfield and Associates
- California Resources Corporation
- Center for International Trade and Transportation, California State University, Los Angeles
- City of Long Beach, Economic Development-Workforce Development Department, Pacific Gateway Workforce Innovation Board
- City of Los Angeles, Department of Water and Power
- City of Los Angeles, Department on Disability
- City of Los Angeles, Economic and Workforce Development Department
- City of Los Angeles, Office of Council District 10
- Chrysalis
- Community Development Technologies
- Corporation for Supportive Housing
- County of Los Angeles Workforce Development, Aging, and Community Services
- County of Los Angeles Workforce Development Board
- Downtown Women’s Center
- Elevate Public Affairs
- Growing Big Ideas
- Job Skills Institute
- Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator
- Los Angeles Community College District, Los Angeles Valley College
- Los Angeles Job Corps
- Para Los Niños
- Pink Wave Campaign
- Port of Long Beach
- Propel America
- United Way of Greater Los Angeles
- University of California, Los Angeles Extension
- University of California, Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs
- University of Southern California, Sol Price Center for Social Innovation
- Whittle and Associates
Thank you to our Supporters
Application
The application period for WLN has ended. Fill out an interest form below to receive updates about future WLN cohorts.Nominate
Know someone who would be great for WLN? Nominate them here.Program Calendar
Click here to view the WLN 2023 Program CalendarInformation Session
Watch the recording of the November 1st information session to learn more.Interest Form
Click here to complete an Interest Form and learn more about WLN.Meet the 2023 WLN Cohort
Learn more about the 2023 WLN cohort here.Meet Past Cohorts
Class of 2020
Class of 2022Questions?
For questions or more information, please contact Carson Bruno at carson@corola.org.