About us
“Leadership is enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
—Marshall Ganz
Our People
We are movements, organizations, leaders, organizers, researchers, educators, practitioners and institutions from 75 different countries who consolidate, grow and sustain our power. Adopting and adapting part or all of the community organizing practices across the globe. Together turning our stories into sources of power, dreaming of a more just world and working internationally and strategically towards it with a solid relationship fabric.
Our compass
Vision
A vibrant global community of organizing practice and learning that develops leadership across borders and generations to build people power towards a far more just, sustainable and democratic world.
Mission
To further the knowledge, capacity and leadership of community organizers by connecting ideas, building learning spaces and developing relationships to create organized people power.
Goals
Building the momentum to restructure political, economic, and cultural institutions to secure a more democratic, just, and sustainable world.
Our values
We stand for freedom and justice as our guiding values, and work towards building agency, courage, and solidarity for a more just, democratic and sustainable world.
Our core purpose towards that is enabling people power by developing leaders who can organize their communities for change in ways that center people’s stories and aspirations.
Our work stems from a deep belief in interconnectedness that strives and organizes for freedom and justice collaboratively and collectively, until everyone is free.
We act with utmost thoughtfulness, empathy and courage at all times, ensuring we make courageous choices and committing to meaningful, quality and nuance in all our work.
We constantly and actively learn on this journey by constantly evaluating our work, learning from our failures, and learning from and with each other.
We do all of this with a spirit of joy, generosity and hope, celebrating each others’ success, encouraging growth and leadership even when going gets tough, and facilitating global solidarity and support with a spirit of unabashed and active hopefulness.
Our story
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How it all started
In 1964, a year before he was due to graduate, Marshall Ganz left Harvard University to volunteer for the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort to support the work of African American organizers fighting for the right to vote across the U.S. South. There, he learned about race, power, and politics in America—and that change won’t come unless the people facing problems can author change. Such authorship depends on turning existing resources into the power needed to win change.
For a community to act together with such solidarity, however, there needs to be trained leadership—not just one person, but many. This is organizing. It is about justice, not charity. In Mississippi, it became Marshall’s calling.
Marshall returned home to Bakersfield, California, where Cesar Chavez had launched his campaign to organize the United Farm Workers union. Although he had grown up in the world of the farm worker, Marshall had been oblivious to it. It took his new ‘Mississippi eyes’ to see another community of people of color who also lacked political rights and economic protection—evidence of California’s own rich history of racial discrimination. Mississippi turned out not to be an exception in America, but an aspect of America that needed to change.
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After a 28-year ‘leave of absence’ organizing communities, unions, and electoral campaigns, Marshall returned to Harvard to complete his undergraduate degree, earn an MPA at the Kennedy School, and a PhD in sociology. While working on his doctorate, he was asked to develop a course on organizing. In this way, he had the opportunity to integrate his life experience with social science in a pedagogical engagement: it was an opportunity for a conversation with the future.
On the faculty full-time since 2000, Marshall was drawn back into the world of practice by his students, beginning with the 2003–4 Howard Dean for President Campaign, a three-year project improving Sierra Club groups’ effectiveness, and launching Camp Obamas to organize volunteers in Barack Obama’s 2007–8 campaign for president.
After the Obama campaign, interest in this method of enabling people to begin learning how to translate their values into effective action emerged in education, health care, environmental action, and immigration reform. Three collaborations in particular, with the DREAMer movement, the New Organizing Institute (NOI), and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) anchored the budding network’s U.S.-based work. At the same time, Marshall’s students and collaborators went on to adapt the organizing pedagogy in communities around the world. In 2011 in Amman, Jordan, for example, Nisreen Haj Ahmad and Mais Irqsusi launched Ahel, a training institute that developed a core of 47 educators, trained some 3,000 people in organizing, and coached some 24 campaigns in the region.
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The same year, Marshall launched an online course at Harvard called Leadership, Organizing, and Action: Leading Change to share this approach with emerging leaders around the world. In the Balkans, for example, the leadership of ‘Serbia on the Move’ adopted the Leading Change Network (LCN) pedagogy as their main theory of change and ran over 10 campaigns in Serbia fighting for medical reform, maternal benefits, and other policy changes. They have since trained more than 3,000 people and developed over 30 educators.
Creating the Leading Change Network
The idea for the Leading Change Network (LCN) emerged from conversations with leaders active across diverse domains in multiple countries, who identified a need for a global community of practice to enable organizers, educators, and researchers to learn from one another, improve their practice, and engage others in their work.In 2012, LCN convened its first Global Gathering of some 100 participants from 20 countries. Ever since, online and offline gatherings have continued to create opportunities for learning, growth, and development. LCN is committed to a culture of craft, evaluation, and learning across institutional, cultural, and geographical boundaries. We have grown to become a community of organizers, educators, and researchers from more than 30 countries who are active in some 36 countries and lead trainings in 30 different languages.
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On July 27, 2013, the Leading Change Network (LCN) convened its second Global Gathering – a 3.5-hour-long online organizing conference of 140 people from 29 countries for plenaries, one-on-one meetings, breakout sessions, and discussion groups. The session was organized by a leadership team of ten organizers.
On November 15, 2014, LCN convened its third Global Gathering – a 4-hour-long online conference. That enabled 89 social change practitioners from 23 countries working in 11 different sectors to come together to learn from the experiences of others and forge a shared consciousness.
In 2015, LCN convened its first Global Affiliates Gathering, in Andrevlje, Serbia. It was held over three days, March 27–29, and brought together community organizing practitioners, trainers and coaches from across the globe to discuss trends and challenges in community organizing, and to shape the path for future activities of Global Affiliates. The meeting was attended by professor Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government; Rawan Zeine, Leading Change Network Board Member; Nisreen Haj Ahmad, Project Coordinator for Global Affiliates; and Sung E Bai, Leading Change Network Executive Director.
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The meeting was also attended by sixteen representatives from the following Global Affiliates member organizations: Serbia on the move (Serbia), Ahel (Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon), New Organizing Institute (USA), United We Dream (USA), Planned Parenthood (USA), Community Organizing Japan (Japan), Tatua Kenya (Kenya), Haiyya (India) and ReThink Health (USA). The GA Gathering established that members have jointly trained over 32,000 people in approximately 350 trainings and have coached and/or led over 200 campaigns. In total, over 2 million people have been engaged through their campaigns. Between 2016 and 2018, LCN became less active as a network organization.
The LCN community decided to relaunch LCN in 2018 in response to growing challenges to democracy around the world, our desire to turn these challenges into opportunities, and an urgent need to acquire and master the skills needed to turn motivation into successful collective action. LCN was launched as an online conference in 2018 attended by 350 people from 24 countries. This also marked the official start of LCN membership for both individuals and organizations. Between 2018 and 2019, LCN curated 50 learning events, with over 2,900 people attending.
In 2020, the world faced a pandemic, and with it deteriorating health systems, erosion of workers’ rights, and the silent pandemic of domestic violence came into sharp focus. It was a set of realities that made it critical to rethink our priorities and what role LCN could have in supporting organizers worldwide. A series of Covid sessions were launched that truly engaged a global community of 600 people from 69 countries, with participants sharing their learnings and supporting each other through the Covid pandemic.
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With lockdowns and restrictions on physical meetings, the landscape of organizing has changed. It prompted LCN to think strategically about its future direction and by the end of 2020, Mais Irqsusi had assumed the leadership of LCN. Doing what we espouse – LCN started by tackling the most important question: who are our people? Identified the constituency and formed an international and diverse advisory board to rethink the strategic direction of LCN.
At the beginning of 2021, the new team began work framing the future of LCN, starting with internal reflection and then a listening drive in the spring of 2021 that reached over 500 people from our community.
LCN focuses on supporting and building leadership capacity for effective community organizing through advancing the framework, giving access to knowledge, coaching campaigns, workshops, support seeding hubs globally, and by convening a community of practice.
Board of directors



LCN team






Our supporters
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative CZI | Marshall Ganz | ImpactAssets | Jennifer McCrea | Anthony Barash & Terri Hanson | Lisa Renstrom & Robert Perkowitz | Rebecca Henderson | The Conway Family Charitable Fund | The Omidyar Group | Kelsey Wirth & Samuel Myers
Mais Irqsusi

Sweden/Jordan
The Leading Change Network takes immense pride in its brilliant, multitalented executive director, Mais Irqsusi.
Mais has been founding and growing community organizing entities across the world for 13 years, embodying the value of global empowerment.
A pioneer of community organizing , co-founder of Ahel, the distinguished organizing institute in Jordan and later as founder of Community Organizing Europe in Sweden, Mais brings rich experience adapting practices of leadership development, organizing and campaigning to widely diverse geographic, institutional, cultural and political settings.
She has become an active contributor to LCN since its inception in 2012.
Passionate about leadership development, Mais is determined to support changemakers to organize and lead campaigns that oppose unjust systems and strive for human rights and freedom.
She has pursued her mission of developing leadership, building civic capacity, and campaigning for social justice by leading over 100 workshops; coaching 15 organizing campaigns, and building organizational infrastructure to sustain, improve, and expand on this work
Within the LCN team, Mais is our go-to person for overview global insight, strategic questions, partnerships, programs design and bringing innovation and community spirit to our work!
Mariana Garza
Communications Coordinator
Mexico
The Leading Change Network prides itself on its great network and online presence, owing that to our brilliant Communications Coordinator and Membership Officer, Mariana!
Mariana develops and oversees LCN’s communication strategy, devising the day-to-day coordination plans across our channels of communication through social media and email. She also manages memberships and provides technical support to all LCN members when needed!
Mariana is driven by curiosity and energized by empowering the voices and aspirations of the people, which led her to delve with passion into a long career striving for social change, with experience as a communication strategist, audiovisual producer and content creator in the nonprofit sector
Within the LCN team, Mariana is our go-to person when in need of sharing stories, events or opportunities with the LCN Community, and for developing creative projects, communication strategies and graphic designs!
Sachiko Osawa

Sweden/Japan
As the Membership Engagement and Community of Practice Coordinator, Sachiko is the maestro behind the Leading Change Network’s beautiful orchestra!
Passionate about building people-powered, intersectional movements for a more humane, democratic and just world, Sachiko has been practicing and teaching LCN’s organizing and narrative practices for the past 8 years! She has also co-founded Chabujo, a Tokyo-based feminist grassroots organization, has led campaigns against sexual violence and discrimination, and trained and coached various youth-led campaigns across Japan.
She enjoys learning about all the amazing campaigns, innovations, and adaptations happening in the community to share with others, while also leading the newly relaunched Coaching & Support program.
Within the LCN team, Sachiko is our go-to person for ideas on learning sessions, connecting people, designing and coordinating events, and bringing thoughtful reflection and learning to our work!
Reem Khashman
Céline Lebrun Shaath France

France
They say power is knowledge, but at the Leading Change Network, we believe that knowledge shared and turned into action is where the real power lies. As the coordinator of LCN’s Training of Trainers program, Céline works to provide our community of coaches and trainers with the emotional, strategic and practical skills they need to empower more and more organizers and leaders around the world!
Céline grew up in Paris, France, and holds a MA in political science from La Sorbonne University.
Moving to Egypt in 2012, she worked as a political and social researcher, specializing in social movements in the Middle-East, Palestine Studies and Postcolonial Studies. In 2015, in a context of generalized repression, she co-founded BDS Egypt, the largest political and social coalition for the defense of Palestinian rights in Egypt. Part of the global BDS movement, BDS Egypt calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until the realization of Palestinians’ political rights. As an organizer with BDS Egypt, she worked with her teammates to create a space uniting people from different political backgrounds where they could develop their leadership and strategic skills, and raise their voice despite the authoritarian context.
In 2019, she joined Marshall Ganz’s team of teaching fellows at the Harvard Kennedy School of Education to share her knowledge and experience as an organizer. That same year, following the arbitrary arrest of her husband, Ramy Shaath, a well-known Egyptian-Palestinian Human Rights defender and prisoner of conscience in Egypt, she led the international campaign for his release.
Jafrin Akhtar
Administrative Assistant
India
With an impressive keenness to learn and a quick-witted attitude, Jafrin takes up the role of the Leading Change Network’s Administrative Assistant, displaying multitudes of eagerness, team spirit, and multi-tasking!
As a grassroots community organizer and social worker, Jafrin believes in the power of community building and safe spaces, especially when they center the personal narratives and experiences of marginalized communities, as she applies in her work with her village and nearby areas of Assam, a North-easteren state of India.
Jafrin brings aboard a vibrant portfolio of experiences, being involved in community work from their early teenage years. Since 2018, she has been leading a feminist youth collective called Spread Love And Peace focusing on the intersections of issues on health, gender, sexuality and leadership building.
Over the years, they have also been involved with a number of prominent organizations, such as Haiyya, YP Foundation, Khoon, Xomonnoy, Guftagu and Circles of Feminist Politics.
Within the LCN team, she’s the go-to person for arranging meetings, extracting event metrics, prepping the backend resources for events, and keeping track of memberships; always dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for the LCN team!
Alyssa Constant

United States
At the Leading Change Network, we never fear the seemingly confusing numbers and complex financial issues, because we always know that our genius finance and accounting lead, Alyssa, has our back!
With a bachelor and Masters degrees in accounting from The University of Texas, Alyssa carries an impressive set of financial skills through which she has kept LCN on track financially since September 2019.
Alyssa enjoys being in an environment filled with such passion and dedication as LCN, inspired everyday by the amazing hard work performed and the positive change resulting from it.
She strives to support more non-profits, seeking to add further value and meaning to both her personal and professional lives.
Within the LCN team, she’s the go-to person for any finance-related issue: invoicing, paying bills, and tracking unrestricted and restricted contributions, as well as a variety of other accounting and financial matters!
Imran Sarwar
Head of Expansion
Pakistan
Some might wonder how the Leading Change Network maintains a global presence that’s continuously developing and growing — they have not met our Head of Global Expansion, Imran!
With a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, and over 10 years of incredible experience in the learning and development space, Imran builds and supports the global structures that use LCN’s organizing tools, pedagogy, and practices across the world, through facilitating the design of ecosystems that enable learning and support, characterized by the unique trait of LCN: locally rooted, yet globally connected.
He has been engaged with LCN since 2020, and joined in his current role from the start of 2022.
Imran cherishes working with people, organizations, and communities to foster growth and build individual and collective leadership and agency, and has quite the portfolio to show it!
An entrepreneur, facilitator, and consultant, Imran has co-founded and run an education non-profit focused on building empathetic learning environments for students and teachers; led training sessions with non-profit leaders, corporate executives, and bureaucrats in Pakistan; and consulted some of the leading nonprofits in Pakistan and globally. He was the head and lead facilitator of Pakistan Fellows Program at Acumen, where he served as the lead facilitator and built a diverse community of over 100 Pakistani Fellows from all sectors. His entrepreneurial ventures include Rabtt, a social enterprise working in the education space in Pakistan, and Daftarkhwan, a co-working space serving the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Pakistan.
Within the LCN team, Imran is the go-to person for strategic questions and thoughts on how everyday decisions connect to the bigger picture of LCN’s vision, making the LCN global ecosystem richer, deeper, and more vibrant!
Abdelrahman ElGendy
Content Writer and Editor
Egypt
A firm believer in the power of storytelling, Abdelrahman is the writer and editor of the Leading Change Network, utilizing the magic of words to craft our compelling narratives and communication texts!
Through the lens of a writer and a passionate human rights advocate, he sees global people empowerment embodied in counter-narratives that serve to expose untold stories, resist prevalent propaganda of oppressors, and enable marginalized communities to be heard and empowered.
Abdelrahman has been part of countless campaigns aiming at freeing Egyptian political prisoners, and is featured on a number of prominent platforms in the Arab world and the US, such as Mada Masr, Raseef22, Daraj Media, and Newlines Magazine.
Within the LCN team, Abdelrahman is our go-to person when seemingly disconnected ideas need to be given a voice and a story, to stem from our hearts, and right to the hearts of our readers.