Tanya Westmoreland is known as “Big Mama” in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Kids in her community stop 
and tell her about their day. They stand a little straighter when she's around and they want her to be proud. She is proud – of the kids and of the community she has called home for 24 years. She’s a leader there, and as a board member for NeighborWorks Green Bay.
For NeighborWorks America, part of the “secret sauce” to working alongside communities is having community members serve on the boards of the nearly 250 network nonprofits. In fact, 33% of each nonprofit’s board must be made up of residents. It’s part of a model that centers leadership and it is rooted in the law that created NeighborWorks.
NeighborWorks believes that one strategic way to center leadership is to help build it. The Congressionally chartered nonprofit does this by helping community leaders hone their skills, offering a variety of training programs to help leaders grow – at all levels. Westmoreland, for instance, is part of the Excellence in Governance (EIG) Academy, a governance certification program for community development-focused nonprofits.
"It's part of who NeighborWorks is," explains Jen Christian, senior director of Network Leadership Development.
NeighborWorks also offers leadership programming for top-level executives through the NeighborWorks Achieving Excellence Program. In FY24, 48 individuals completed the 18-month, professional development program, allowing each participating organization to address a challenge or opportunity critical to their success. The program includes executive coaching, a leadership curriculum and lots of peer learning, all focused around that critical issue.
Meanwhile, Advancing Leaders in Real Estate, funded by JPMorgan Chase, launched in 2022. In FY24, 14 leaders graduated from the program created for real estate professionals employed at network organizations. The program continues this year with a new cohort of 17 participants from 17 network organizations that represent each of NeighborWorks’ four regions. The program includes training, one-on-one mentoring and peer engagement. Several of the 2022 cohort have been promoted since completing the program.
The NeighborWorks’ Strong Leaders Program for Middle Managers, a new program for 2025, was designed to enhance leadership skills of middle managers who supervise staff in any line of business at nonprofit organizations in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and to build their capacity through training and support. The program, sponsored by Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, enhances the skills needed for the management of people and increases leadership skills for long-term professional growth. With support from JPMorgan Chase, NeighborWorks America is exploring replication of this program nationwide.
And of course, each year, NeighborWorks offers its flagship Community Leadership Institute, which in FY24 saw more than 300 resident leaders complete training in San Francisco, California, in courses that help them develop their voice, reach volunteers and lead community projects. FY25’s institute, held in Baltimore, Maryland, also reached more than 300 residents.
Each community team leaves the NeighborWorks Community Leadership Institute with seed money for their projects, which have included everything from mural-making to starting a fitness program or food bank.
“Resident leaders are the equivalent of role models,” says Diosselyn Tot-Velasquez, senior manager, of Community Building & Engagement. “They carry lived experience, cultural knowledge of their community or area of expertise, and are most likely the ones who are helping pave the way for themselves, for ourselves and for generations to come.”
It’s important to provide training, she says, and NeighborWorks is able to provide an introduction to the nonprofit world and show people how to navigate as resident leaders. The CLI “gives them exposure to new skills, development of their current expertise, and access to a wide range of networks across the nation.”
James Page, a previous recipient of the Dorothy Richardson Award for Resident Leadership, says that being at the CLI “motivated me 100 times more. I was able to see all these people doing things that I could relate to. That experience was something that makes you really want to invest more. I can't fix my community by myself, but I can be a part of it."
NeighborWorks invests in communities and their leaders, delivering programs that expand leadership pipelines and retain talent. The programs enable leaders at all levels to catapult their skills – skills that are needed as NeighborWorks and the network create homes and opportunities, building America.
