“I think the National Labor Leadership Institute is a must have and do training for any leader in the labor movement, in the workers’ rights movement right now. It’s such an incredible space where leaders can connect and you have an opportunity to work on yourself, to really work on what we say ‘personal mastery,’ to really get a sense of purpose, to remind yourself of your role in this moment. It’s a great opportunity to build with leaders across the country who are grappling with the same kinds of questions that you are, and be able to ask really big hard questions about the future of the labor movement, but then to get really practical about ‘how do we do that?’ and ‘what is our role as leaders to make change happen in the way that we know is necessary?” – Sarita Gupta, Co-Executive Director, Jobs with Justice
“I've really learned a lot from the National Labor Leadership Initiative and one of the most important things is that as working people, we don't often get the space to be away, to think big and think expansively and we've talked so much about how the labor movement is always in reactive mode. Having this opportunity to get away, to think big, to learn specific skills about how to take those big thoughts and put them into our day to day work so that we're actually building a labor movement, not just responding to crises, is just great.” – Cynthia Jarrold, National Policy Director, Gamaliel
“I've been involved in adult education for almost forty years been involved in union leadership for almost that long as well, and I've never had an experience that was so rich, that caused me to look into myself to understand the journey I've taken as an active trade unionist and to really think about relationships and the relationships we build in NLLI are quite wonderful. But more importantly, it inspired me to think about the relationships I had with others in my own movement in a much deeper way . And that's why I keep saying to other Canadians you’ve got to come down to NLLI, it’s really something that helps build leadership. And, I'm so grateful for everybody that's been involved, the other participants, the people who lead and NLLI... It's a remarkable achievement. I know there's a lot of tough questions that the working class in the United States and across the world have to grapple with. And we need this kind of inspiration, deep ability to analyze that reality, to come up with the right answers.”- John Carter, National Policy Director, Gamaliel
“I really appreciated that it wasn’t just labor leaders in the room. We had folks from worker centers, people that were organizing workers in non-traditional ways, civil rights allies. It made me realize that the labor movement is bigger than just unions and workers, that it’s really part of the fabric of a broader social justice movement, and the history of that work in the south was brought forward to me and the pertinence of that history in the work that we’re doing today. I would highly recommend your participation in this program.” – Louis Malfaro, President, Texas American Federation of Teachers
“The NLLI is an opportunity for union leaders that are ready to talk across unions, across organization, across states to get together and really strategize about how do we transform the labor movement and think of the labor movement as a much more inclusive space for our working allies, whether they’re students on campuses or members that are part of worker centers or the working class and thinking of social justice as a way to mobilize and organize workers not just into the union but to pool the union movement together and actually think of it as something more dynamic and more robust.” – Patrick Nowlan, Executive Director, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
“I would highly recommend this program to anybody that's a union leader. I'm coming up on my 40 years in the union and I've been a union leader for 25 of those years working for families and union members, and I can’t say that I've went to a better program. So with that I would highly recommend it.” – Ed Navarro, Regional Director, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers