MUA is committed to building a strong staff that prioritizes practicing shared leadership and investing in the next generation of organizational leaders.  We also hope to continue to be a model of sustainable and healthy leadership and professional practices throughout the movement.  We believe that internal capacity building efforts will increase our organizational capacity to think strategically and engage in social change.

MUA’s Internal Leadership Development efforts aim to:

• Indicate to our emerging Latina immigrant staff that we believe in their leadership and are willing to invest in the development in their skills via customized training, coaching with consultants, peer coaching and practice circles, and other avenues that we identify.
• Create curriculum via our Futuro Fuerte (Strong Future) program that builds the skills that we have identified that current MUA leaders need and that the organization needs our leaders to have in order to ensure healthy work relationships, effective supervision, program management, and the ability to think and act strategically.
• Prepare emerging leaders to move into future leadership positions within the organization thus opening up new opportunities for emerging grassroots leaders.
• Explore our relationship with positional power and affirm that making decisions is an expression of leadership.
• Clarify our decision-making processes and structures so that we are able to be more agile, feel comfortable with disagreement and in the process of disagreement arrive at better and more strategic options and decisions, and know how to resolve conflict in a healthy way.
• Confront dynamics of power and privilege among staff, improve communication, and resolve conflicts so that MUA authentically models our values of lifting up immigrant women’s leadership and self-determination while actively creating and promoting models for solidarity and shared leadership.  Our ability to navigate these dynamics in a way aligned with our values will serve as a model for our movements of what it takes to centralize the leadership of women who are often marginalized.