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GAINS: Gender and Intersectional Network Series, Leadership Workshop prepares students with the skills to lead effectively and challenge institutional norms and practices that perpetuate disparities based on gender, race and other structural inequalities. Women, racially marginalized individuals, and LGBTI-identified individuals are still disproportionately underrepresented in leadership roles in public, private, and nonprofit institutions in spite of high rates of educational attainment and equal opportunity legislation. Women of color and indigenous women face even greater obstacles to advancement compared to white women. Barriers to diverse leadership today stem less from overt discrimination and more from "second generation" forms of bias—often invisible but still powerful cultural beliefs as well as workplace structures and practices. Achieving leadership parity thus entails individual, collective and institutional change.

Course pedagogy includes case studies, group discussions, self-reflection and simulations that have been proven to have a lasting impact on individual leaders in developing their own leadership capacity. Guest speakers offer potential role models and share their leadership perspectives. The workshop and two-semester format of the course allows students to benefit from a cohort model of learning and develop their own network of practice. Moreover, GAINS focuses not just on individual leadership development, but also organizational and systems level change.

Students of all genders interested in addressing personal and institutional barriers to advancement that are rooted in gender inequalities and their intersections with race and other forms of inequality are welcome to enroll. To get the most out of the network and cohort development aspects of this course, students are encouraged to participate for two semesters.

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