By Shemeka Sorrells
Registration for the latest offering of the Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative opens this summer. One of the Collaborative’s alums, Casey Family Programs’ Shemeka Sorrells, shared with us some reflections on her experience and how it’s affected her approach to leadership, systems change and her organization’s work.
Some experiences don’t just expand your thinking – they fundamentally shift who you are as a leader. For me, the Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative (JLLLC), offered by Philanthropy Southeast, was exactly that.
As a member of the inaugural Collaborative – in what was then called the Accelerating Equity Learning Collaborative – I had no way of knowing I was stepping into something that would become a defining chapter of my philanthropic journey. What I found was more than a leadership program. I found a community of courageous practitioners who were wrestling with the same urgent questions I carried into every room: How do we truly advance equity? And what does it cost us when we don’t?
The JLLLC didn’t offer easy answers. What it offered was better – a cohort of peers willing to sit in the discomfort of hard truths together, and the intellectual rigor to move through that discomfort toward action. Being surrounded by leaders who modeled bravery in this work challenged each of us to show up more boldly in our own organizations and communities.
What ignited something deep in me was the program’s insistence on grounding present-day challenges in history. That integration didn’t just sharpen my analysis – it awakened a conviction that community organizing is one of the most powerful levers we have for systems change. As a practitioner at an operating foundation – one that gets to both fund solutions and test them – I returned to Casey Family Programs with a sharpened narrative and a concrete proposal rooted in what I had learned.
The result: the launch of an initiative within our national foundation with a dedicated focus on child and family well-being in the American South. That work would not exist in the same form without the JLLLC.
Central to that transformation was the privilege of learning alongside giants in Southern philanthropy, including Janine Lee herself and the incomparable Linetta Gilbert, among so many others. Their words, rooted in decades of struggle, perseverance, and hard-won progress, were not simply informative. They were fuel. Janine, in particular embodied what it looks like to lead with both vision and courage in this field, and her legacy now lives in every cohort that carries her name forward.
To those considering applying to the next JLLLC cohort: Come ready. Come ready not just to learn about equity in the South, but to be stretched in your own understanding of what equity demands of you. Come ready to grapple honestly with our shared history, and to be held accountable to our collective future. The JLLLC will meet you where you are – and then ask you to go further than you thought possible.
The South is not a footnote in American philanthropy. It is the frontier. And the Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative is one of the most powerful investments our field can make in the leaders who will shape it.
Shemeka Sorrells is a Strategic Consultant at Casey Family Programs and an alum of the 2023 Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative.
About the Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative
If you are seeking a learning space that challenges you to grow, reflect, and lead alongside others who are deeply committed to meaningful change, the Janine Lee Learning & Leadership Collaborative may be for you. This Collaborative is more than a program – it is a community grounded in shared experience, courageous leadership, and collective learning. Participants are supported to deepen their practice, expand their impact, and connect with others who believe equity work is leadership, and at its core it is relational, reflective, and rooted in purpose.
If you are ready to join a group of committed peers who challenge and support one another – and embrace accountability – we invite you to learn more and prepare to apply for the 2027 Collaborative. Applications will open in Summer 2026.