The LinkingLeaders Partnership

A shared effort of Tiwahe Foundation, the African American Leadership Forum, Coalition of Asian American Leaders, and LatinoLEAD, LinkingLeaders focuses on strengthening connections across our networks in order to increase our shared leadership and solidarity practices to advance powerful systems change work advancing racial justice and equity.

Tiwahe Foundation

LinkingLeaders is a partnership uniting a dynamic network of 20,000+ leaders across four organizations committed to advancing racial equity in Minnesota. Representing the rich perspectives and worldviews of Native, African American, Latine, and Asian American communities, we work collaboratively to redeﬁne leadership and create diverse pathways for empowered, impactful leaders.

Our partnership strengthens connections, equips leaders with shared tools, and fosters spaces for cross-cultural collaboration. By creating opportunities for deeper cultural understanding and unity, we amplify the power of our collective voices. Through facilitated leadership development and intentional relationship-building, we honor the unique strengths of each community while standing in solidarity to drive meaningful, transformative change for Minnesota’s future.

Truth-in-History Project | Amplifying Community Stories

TIH is an evolving initiative dedicated to capturing and sharing the diverse stories of place across Minnesota’s communities. Through video storytelling, we highlight the deep connections between people, land, and water, preserving narratives that reflect the rich cultural complexity of our state.

This project is actively in progress, built for longevity and designed as a resource for communities and beyond to explore, learn, and engage with histories often left untold. As we continue this work, we remain committed to deep community engagement, strategic partnerships, and the development of programming and resources that ensure this project’s impact grows over time. Our vision is for this to be a living, evolving project with opportunities for co-ownership and collaboration.

The Truth-in-History Project exists as a space for reflection, storytelling, and connection, honoring the histories that shape Minnesota’s landscapes and communities.

The Basis of our Solidarity Framework

Current Conditions

Historic structures exist to uphold racism, part of that history has been to keep communities of color separate rather than united
The 4 Linking Leaders Networks seek to undo those systems and their impacts through a concrete practice of solidarity
The 4 Networks understand justice and prosperity for each of their specific communities are interdependent with one another
The 4 Networks acknowledge that practicing solidarity does not mean nor require all 4 networks engage in uniform activities at the same time or in the same way

Assumptions

Trust is essential to a practice of solidarity
Increased Trust will allow the networks to act in solidarity
A framework for practice allows the 4 Networks to do some things together in service to shared success
This work is aspirational

This Partnership was Built to:

Honor the interconnectedness of our liberation, recognizing that none of us are free until we all are free.
Celebrate and elevate leadership, ensuring it drives transformation across sectors while challenging norms of invisibility and isolation.
Leverage the collective power of diverse leaders, demonstrating that we are stronger together—greater than the sum of our parts.
Cultivate cross-cultural solidarity, building networks that strengthen collaboration and solidarity across identities and perspectives.
Invest in leadership development, not to ﬁx but to amplify, afﬁrm, and unleash the limitless potential that already exists in communities.
Foster learning, connection, and advocacy, equipping leaders with relational tools to drive meaningful change while holding space for shared growth.

Living Our Values: Tiwahe’s Commitment to Collective Liberation

Unbreakable Solidarity:

At Tiwahe, solidarity begins with how we live our values. We honor family by being a consistent, trusted relative, welcoming, resourcing, and reconnecting Native peoples in ways that foster belonging. We honor culture, language, traditional knowledge, and lifeways as Tiwahe’s identity and foundation, guiding everything we do. These values shape our role in LinkingLeaders, a long-standing partnership of ours. We honor commitment by aligning our resources with those who share our vision, and we honor reciprocity through relationships grounded in mutual care, accountability, and generosity. Our collective liberation depends on this kind of intentional, values-driven solidarity—and we’re showing up to build it together.

This is why we are part of the LinkingLeaders partnership, a long-standing blueprint for collective power between the Tiwahe Foundation, The Forum, LatinoLEAD, and the Coalition of Asian American Leaders. We see this partnership as a manifestation of generations of resistance and creation across Native, Black, Latine, and Asian communities.

The leaders at our table are not just allies—we are co-conspirators and architects of an unstoppable movement to equip emerging leaders with the culturally grounded tools, spaces, and support needed to lead with empathy, integrity, and cross-cultural understanding. Together, our organizations are investing in the next generation—amplifying the voices that will shape the next century.

We stand with all those who feel threatened or targeted in this moment. We see you. We hear you. And we will not be silent. We also know this is a time for both hope and action—a moment to embody solidarity in tangible ways, to protect one another, and to receive reparative resources through reciprocal relationships. This is a time to stand in our power, to lead in community, and to move with clarity and authenticity.

History reminds us that liberation is never a solo act. This partnership was born from the belief that we are stronger together. When we unify our voices and align our strategies, we turn possibility into inevitability.

With vast networks of leaders across four culturally intentional organizations, we are leveraging our collective wisdom, resources, and resilience to drive systemic transformation. This is a partnership forged in the back rooms of revolution, across kitchen tables, and through strategy sessions—built on the kind of trust that turns co-conspirators into kin.

This is not just about standing together. It’s about growing and moving together. Learning from one another. And ensuring every leader is equipped, resourced, and positioned to build what comes next.

We are actively continuing to:

Advocate for justice and equity:
We show up and speak out against policies and practices that violate our values or threaten the rights, dignity, and well-being of our communities.
Build bridges of understanding:
We foster dialogue and cross-cultural collaboration, knowing that our shared humanity is more powerful than any force that seeks to divide us.
Invest in our communities:
We develop and support leaders with the tools and resources to drive bold, meaningful change.
Celebrate our diverse cultures:
We honor the richness, beauty, and resilience of our cultures, knowing that our diversity is not a barrier—it is our greatest strength.

We are not shaken by this moment. We are rooted in it. We continue to do what we’ve always done—uplift our communities, deepen relationships, create spaces for hard but necessary conversations and ideate together toward solutions that will outlast us.

In the spirit of our ancestors, we are building the world that needs us—on our terms, in our vision, and with the full force of our collective genius.