What We Do

We mentor, train, support, and uplift Black communities.

Inclusion without impact is a half-measure. The Barbara Jordan Leadership Institute empowers Black women to create a Texas that is fair, compassionate, healthy, prosperous and safe.

Agency

Black women can speak, act, organize and lead for themselves. BJLI is committed to supporting and amplifying their voices.

Compassion

Throughout our nation’s history, Black women have supported and fought for the most vulnerable and disenfranchised among us. BJLI centers these concerns in a broader context.

Equity

The diversity of Texas is its strength and its power. BJLI believes the distribution of access to governance and community resources should reflect the diversity of voices and ideas that makes us great.

Leadership Diversity in Action

Voter Education

Democracy works best when all participants are informed of their rights and can equally access them. Our voter education strategy includes layered communication to ensure voters know when, where and how to vote.

BJLI educates voters in North Texas, East Texas, and Greater Houston. We motivate unengaged and poorly engaged voters through workshops, trainings and community education. The East Texas program focuses on Black communities within the state’s rural areas to provide voter information, access, registration and other related resources that will support the growth of voter participation and engagement.

Advocacy

BJLI works holistically and side by side with Black community members to address the root causes of health and wealth disparities through community issue education and participation in the policy-making process. Our combination of grasstops and grassroots education and advocacy has resulted in five bills becoming law in the State of Texas.

Health Equity

We advance health equity through community health education, raising awareness of available health resources, increasing access to affordable care, and involving community members in the policy process. Our health equity work resulted in HB 1966 and HB 1967 becoming law, successful feminine hygiene supply drives that collected over 5,000 product donations for modest means women and girls and engaged over 35,000 people in our advocacy and education efforts.

BJLI strengthens the current generation of Black women leaders while recruiting and preparing the next generation. We demonstrate the power of diversity and inclusion by encouraging and equipping leaders to participate in advocacy and governing processes.

Annual Impact

Economic Justice

BJLI advances economic justice by supporting community members through programming and resource connection that enables participants to fully engage in their local economy. This includes identifying barriers to training and economic opportunities and helping people overcome them. We also connect people to workforce development opportunities and entrepreneurship resources to create stronger civic, community and economic participation.

Mentorship

With BJLI’s support network and mentor matching, Black women leverage the experience and wisdom of their colleagues as they push for a more empowered community. BJLI’s events, digital presence, and communications allow people from all facets of life―elected and appointed leaders, strategists, fundraisers, communications professionals, research and policy experts, organizers, advocates, and community leaders―to connect with each other in a sustained way.

Advocacy Training

We equip people to effectively advocate for the policies they want to see in their own communities by teaching, disseminating, and leveraging our extensive network of social justice, civic, and faith organizations. Our strategy meets people where they are. This allows community leaders to persuasively proceed from protest to policy, and hold their elected and appointed leadership accountable.