Since President Barack Obama left office in January 2017, he has kept busy with a number of projects. One close to his heart is the Obama Foundation, which has launched various programs for people to connect with each other and motivate them to make change. One of those programs is the foundation's Leaders USA, which recently announced its new group of participants for 2024-2025.
Three of the 13 LGBTQ+ people selected for the Leaders USA program are based in the Bay Area. They'll be learning both about how to develop as leaders and how to build civic engagement in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Lindsay Schubiner, program director of the Western States Center, is queer and told the Bay Area Reporter she is based in the East Bay. Schubiner, 40, said she applied to participate because the program "offers opportunities to connect with a network of values-driven people working in their own communities and nationally for democracy, and I think particularly right now democracy is under such incredible threat, and requires a response equal to that threat."
The other two LGBTQ Bay Area participants are Ryan Easterly, 42, a gay man who is the executive director of the WITH Foundation in San Mateo, which works to promote the establishment of comprehensive health care for adults with developmental disabilities; and Elissa Lee, 31, is a bisexual queer woman who is the senior adviser for community engagement at California Volunteers. She lives in Berkeley and works in Sacramento.
There are over 100 people in this year's Leaders USA cohort.
"We meet together, we have group discussions, and we engage with other national leaders to learn from them and engage with them," Schubiner said. "There's an executive coaching component, and a big part is building the community of leaders and building our network around making value-facing change."
The Obama Foundation Leaders USA Program, now in its second year, was inspired by the leadership values and approach of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, a news release stated. The program draws on the foundation's "Hope to Action" curriculum to support leaders in engaging diverse perspectives, building collective power, and making tangible, sustainable progress toward a better world, the release noted. The Leaders USA Program has a particular focus on strengthening democratic culture.
"Our Leaders program connects and empowers changemakers from around the world who are advancing inclusive and effective solutions to the biggest challenges we face," Obama stated in the release. "I'm incredibly proud of the leaders we've worked with over the years, and excited to welcome this new class. Together, they bring different perspectives, ideas, and experiences to the table, and our hope is that they'll be able to learn from each other and develop a deep network of support.
"I'm inspired by their dedication, and look forward to seeing them grow and create lasting, meaningful change in their communities," Obama added.
Easterly, who lives in San Francisco, said it's a six-month program from start to finish. His organization focuses on health care for adults with developmental challenges and advocates for large-scale change in the industry.
"There's no community, no identity that disability is not a part of," Easterly, 42, said. "So I appreciate being able to benefit from the vast network of the Obama Leaders program."
California Volunteers, where Lee works, is under the auspices of Governor Gavin Newsom's office. She previously led awareness and action health campaigns for Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation.
As a two-time fellow in the Journalists in Aging program hosted by the Gerontological Society of Aging and the Journalists Network on Generations during the COVID pandemic lockdowns, Lee, who has a doctorate in occupational therapy, said she was "struck by how many seniors would talk to me in their front door, pointing out neighbors" who were supporting their neighbors in various ways.
She wants to help bring communities together across divides the way she saw happened at the grassroots level during COVID, and so oversees the neighbor-to-neighbor initiative at California Volunteers.
"I kind of jumped at it," she said of applying for the Obama Foundation program. "A big focus of President Obama's this year was the power and practice of pluralism and being able to have people of all different backgrounds and beliefs live together in society."
She said the former president tried to craft a narrative to bring Americans together, and that the foundation is focused on that same work.
"We've done a number of practices around public narrative in a way that tells the story of me, the story of us, and the story of the future – what's next – and I feel I've already learned a lot," Lee said.
Asked her hopes for the program, Schubiner brought the issue back to the preservation of democracy.
"I'm really hoping to grow my network of leaders working on democracy, working to defend democracy and thinking in creative and expansive ways about how to preserve and expand rights in this country," she said. "I'm hoping through that I can clarify my own goals and strategies for my work around defending democracy over the course of the program and hopefully gain new insights around how to do this work of countering bigotry and defending democracy in new and more creative ways that involve more sectors."
Other out participants
There were a total of 13 LGBTQ participants selected for this year's cohort. The others are Ray López-Chang, a queer Los Angeles movement-builder who has worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education and United Way of Greater Los Angeles; Hannah Mesounai, director of mission and equity consulting with the YMCA McLean County, Pennsylvania; Jerrel Peterson, a social worker by training who's head of content policy at Spotify; and Akiesha Anderson, an attorney who runs the Anderson Admissions Academy, a social enterprise designed to provide financially accessible services to help low-income, first-generation, and minority law school applicants successfully navigate the law school admissions process.
Others are Lisa Mae Brunson, who serves on the boards of California State University, Long Beach's Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Rochester Institute of Technology's National Institute for the Deaf's Employer Advisory Group; Alex Grant, the national outreach director at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition; and Nam Hoang Hoai Nguyen, a crisis counselor for the Crisis Text Line.
Rounding out this year's LGBTQ participants are Stephen "Steve" Westby, a U.S. Army veteran who is the assistant director of student veteran transition and success at New York University; Josh Coleman, deputy director of the division of social justice and racial equity in the office of the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama; and Fernando Cárdenas, the senior director of community engagement, culture, and language at Comcast.
The Obama Foundation has launched other programs since 2018. These include fellowships and programs such as one to train emerging leaders in Africa.
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