Director's Message

The Face of Leadership in the 21st Century—Clarity, Competency, Courage, Compassion, and Collaboration

We’ve marched, written, sung, studied, researched, and multitasked as students, mothers, scholars, policymakers, and CEOs to ensure that women’s voices are heard, actions converted into sustainable policies, and lives enriched across the decades. While some victories have been claimed, millions more are in need of claiming in order for the day-to-day lives of women to change qualitatively.

Over the course of this year, the Women’s Leadership Institute (WLI) at Mills College will embark upon a series of conversations and strategic planning sessions with faculty, staff, students, and student organizations to articulate a philosophy of 21st-century leadership that reflects the vision and goals of the Mills community while refocusing and broadening its outreach to collaborate and build partnerships with local, national, and global communities engaged in women’s leadership. As WLI continues to explore viable ways to bridge scholarship, activism, research, and artistic expression, we remain committed to maximizing our capacity to work strategically in supporting the education of women and sustainable social change, while supporting community as well as global political leadership for women.

Make the Mills Women’s Leadership Institute website a regular stop on your journey into the world of leadership. We’ll highlight the work of programs and publications at Mills, and beyond, serving to grow and sustain the legacies of millions of feminist scholars, activists, policy makers, artists, filmmakers, and philosophers whose work must endure and translate into supporting new generations and communities of girls and women across the country and around the world in their evolution and service as leaders.