Dear Aspiration Community,
I write to so many of you, with whom I have shared so much, with some really important news. After much reflection, I will be moving on from my role as Aspiration’s Program Director. My five-year journey at Aspiration has been full of beautiful connections, formative challenges and valuable learning. I am grateful for all of the experiences, opportunities and meaningful relationships I was able to build through this work.
I joined Aspiration eager to apply my teaching and organizing experience while learning new, technical and practical skills to better support the communities I am a part of. The work I got to do surpassed my expectations, and it is rewardingly difficult to sum up all of the roles and projects I took on during my time here. In my roles as a capacity builder, facilitator and ultimately Program Director, I had the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with an inspiring community of organizers, nonprofit and foundation leaders, radical movement technologists and fellow capacity builders. My main objective was to support this community in building technology capacity, developing facilitative leadership skills and strengthening network connections.
I had the honor to work with and learn from folks working on various human rights issues and movements for justice locally, nationally and internationally. I got to take the lead in convening the CA Nonprofit Technology Festival and Nonprofit Software Development Summit. I got to facilitate many virtual and in-person convenings with amazing folks working with the Mozilla Festival, Rural Justice Summit, Building Healthy Communities, La Colectiva de Mujeres, Digital Freedom Fund, Creative Commons, Allied Media, Mobilization Lab, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, James B. McClatchy Foundation, and Wikimedia Foundation to name a few. I am extremely proud of all the work we got to do together on these projects and events.
At Aspiration I learned that supporting and investing in the leadership of others is key to strengthening our movements for justice. During my last two years, I worked on setting the building blocks for Aspiration's emerging Facilitative Leadership Program, which centers on creating collaborative peer-learning cohorts for emerging leaders to connect, share practices, and strengthen their facilitative leadership skills. Facilitative leadership means leading in ways that helps others claim their own power, agency and leadership. We convened our first cohort with an amazing group of leaders who were down to collectively shape, co-create, and co-facilitate this space with us. This leadership cohort gathered for two years, collectively facilitating sessions on leadership challenges, vision and goal-setting, and strengthening digital skills. The response to this space felt affirming and it showed us that the program was worth creating to further deepen our capacity building work with the network. My colleagues have recently launched two new leadership cohort-based programs, the How to Raise Money Series, and the Data Leadership Cohort I am excited to see this work grow.
It has been a beautiful, challenging, and growthful journey and I am extremely grateful for all of the support, coaching, and mentorship I received from Gunner and the Aspiration team, Misty and the rest of the Aspiration Board of Directors, and so many of you in our community. This work has impacted, uplifted and empowered me in ways I will be forever grateful for and I am looking forward to applying all that I learned in my future endeavors. Thank you for all the times we got to share space in honest, affirming, and joyful ways. I will hold all the memories close and I hope we can keep in touch and share space in the Aspiration circle again someday.
For now, I will be taking some time to travel, spend time with family and put energy into musical projects. I look forward to returning to organizing in facilitative ways locally and internationally again in the future and am excited to explore new approaches, opportunities and possibilities.
If you would like to keep in touch, you can reach me at hello@evelynarellano.com.
Gracias por todo y un fuerte abrazo,
Evelyn
Photo Credit: Erik Westra | erikwestra.com