Rockwood Leadership Institute

Rockwood received support from the Ford Foundation, one of the top left-leaning grantmaking organizations in the United States, in its early years. ¹ In addition, several of the institute’s board members hold senior positions at other leading left-of-center institutions, including the Center for American Progress and the Tides Center. ^{4 4}

Background

The institute started out in 2000 as the Rockwood Leadership Program, a collective of environmentalist activists in Berkeley, California. By 2003, the program had also incorporated members of other left-leaning advocacy causes. Two years later, the program entered a partnership with the Ford Foundation. With this support, Rockwood launched several new issue-based fellowships for same-sex and transgender advocates, opponents of the death penalty, and backers of other left-wing causes. By 2015, the Rockwood Leadership Institute claimed to have trained more than 5,000 activists, touting the fact that more than half of all alumni were women and members of racial minority groups. ⁵

In 2016, the institute announced that it would start placing a greater emphasis on promoting left-of-center perspectives on race and examining the impact of technology on society. ⁶

Initiatives

The flagship program of the Rockwood Leadership Institute is its “Art of Leadership” seminar, in which the training includes “guided meditation, small group exercises, games, and deep reflection.” The institute also offers trainings specific to various identity groups: there is a “space” for “women and femmes of color” — including “trans, cis, and gender-nonconforming women, and nonbinary individuals” — as well as one for “leaders of color” in general. ²

In addition, the institute runs a separate training program tailored explicitly towards minority activist called “The HeArt [sic] of Black Leadership.” Among other things, the program claims to offer a path towards “collective liberation” and combat alleged “internalized anti-blackness” within left-of-center activist movements. ³

Other programs at Rockwood include fellowships covering childcare policy, grantmaking practices, education, and advocacy for legalized abortion. ⁷

Leadership

Darlene Nipper is the chief executive officer of the Rockwood Leadership Institute. She joined the organization in 2016. Previously, she was the deputy executive director at the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Task Force, an activist group which pushes for the normalization of homosexuality and gender transition. ⁸

Bex Ahuja is the managing director of the Rockwood Leadership Institute and joined the organization in 2021. Ahuja previously worked for a number of LGBT organizations. ⁹

Rebecca Cokley is a member of the Rockwood Leadership Institute board and the director of the disability policy initiative at the Center for American Progress, a leading left-of-center think tank with strong ties to the Democratic Party establishment. She previously worked in the Obama administration as a staffer at the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. ¹⁰

Ellen Friedman is a member of the Rockwood Leadership Institute board and the executive director of the Compton Foundation, a left-of-center grantmaking organization. Previously, Friedman spent more than two decades at the Tides Center, eventually rising to the position of executive vice president. ¹⁰

Financials

In 2020, the Rockwood Leadership Institute received more than $4.88 million in donations and grants. In 2021, contributions jumped to more than $8.73 million. ¹¹ That year, the institute received a $300,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as a grant of more than $550,000 from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. ^{12 13} Other major donors have included the Ford Foundation, which gave $250,000 in 2022, and the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, which gave more than $350,000 in 2019 and $50,000 in 2023. ^{14 15}