On Leadership
Alexandra Siclait selected for the 2025 Women inPower Fellowship
NEW YORK – January 27, 2025 – 92nd Street Y, New York’s Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact has announced the 2025 Class of Women inPower, a fellowship program aimed at advancing women+ to the highest levels of leadership across all sectors. The new cohort consists of Fellows selected from a competitive pool of hundreds of applicants. This year’s Fellows include leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions, including education, government, law, technology, finance, international affairs, philanthropy, nonprofits, arts, business, healthcare, and media.
Strengthening the Creative Economy Through Infrastructure, Not Just Capital
In my role as a mentor and topic advisor for the Wyoming Innovation Partnership’s Investing in Wyoming’s Creative Economy program, I worked with a cohort of artists and creative entrepreneurs developing ventures in film, literature, design, and community-based creative practice. In this capacity, I supported participants in translating creative practice into sustainable organizational and business models, advising on fundraising strategy, audience development, pitch refinement, and early-stage venture design.
Meet Alexandra Rachelle Siclait—Bold Journey Magazine
We recently connected with Alexandra Rachelle Siclait and have shared our conversation below.
Alexandra Rachelle, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I was raised in Haiti, the first free black republic. As a result of my cultural history, I have a fervor that pulses through my body. My ability to withstand difficulties and recover quickly is in my blood. However, over the last five years, I have deeply desired to channel my resilience and build a stronger mindset. Thanks to leadership coaching, I have been able to withstand difficulties and recover quickly.
Proteus Fund Welcomes New Director of Fiscal Sponsorship
Proteus Fund is excited to share that Alexandra Rachelle Siclait has joined the Proteus Fund team as the new Director of Fiscal Sponsorship. In this role, Alexandra will lead our fiscal sponsorship practice, implementing strategy, service coordination, business development, and stewardship for a rich ecosystem of social justice initiatives. Through fiscal sponsorship, Proteus Fund partners with emerging initiatives and innovative movement leaders, enabling them to focus on growing their impact with the support of a trusted operational partner. From supporting advocacy and organizing led by and for communities of color and LGBTQ communities to building progressive narrative power and critical movement messaging, we closely partner with strategic initiatives aligned with our vision and values that we believe can significantly impact our world. Supporting the growth and success of these projects accelerates our collective impact and leads to important wins for racial, gender, queer, and disability justice and inclusive democracy.
New Board Member Joins Pollen Midwest
Pollen couldn’t be more excited to welcome a new member to our Board of Directors: Alexandra Siclait—a longtime Pollenite and community leader. As a Pollen board member, Alexandra will help Pollen be a catalyst for the change we are working toward in our communities. She knows that imaginative thinking demands that we seek and commit to truths beyond what is and look to what could be. That imagination is critical to our creativity and belief in a better future. Moreover, imagination drives our efforts to decenter dominant systems of power.
What is Large-Scale Change?
Large-scale change consists of transformational actions to bring about more desirable outcomes in your community. It is about making vast changes in your community and partnering with people to identify problems together. You are considering extensive shifts in systems, processes, or patterns of outcomes. In my former role at the Bush Foundation, I coached prospective Bush Fellows to understand the difference between working within the system and working on remodeling the system.
What is a Strong Track Record?
Questions open the mind to think bigger and differently. You must be grounded in why you show up to lead and get comfortable interrogating your values, identity, culture, and experiences, all of which profoundly and perpetually shape your vision. Without deep introspection, you risk relying on old, broken patterns to solve problems, risk working within broken systems instead of working to change them, and potentially miss the opportunity to maximize your leadership capacity. In my former role at the Bush Foundation, I advised prospective Bush Fellows to welcome questions as the product of investigative inquiry.
A Celebration of Geoffrey Holder’s Life & Legacy
“I create for that innocent little boy in the balcony who has come to the theatre for the first time,” Geoffrey Holder told Dance magazine in 2010. “He wants to see magic, so I want to give him magic. He sees things that his father couldn’t see.” When I think of Geoffrey Holder, a Trini dancer, choreographer, actor, composer, designer, sculptor, and painter, I cannot help but think how this native of Trinidad and Tobago created magic in the African American experience. But unfortunately, this past Sunday, we lost Geoffrey to complications from pneumonia. He was 84.
Thinking Beyond the Boundaries of Labels
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — There is no denying it. He is evocative, engaging, and delightfully charming. But perhaps most captivating is his infectious smile that is so disarming. Talk to him for five minutes or talk to him for an hour; regardless, Mark Nerenhausen will leave a considerable impression on the most cynical. Few leaders can truly match Mark's achievements. His accomplishments are not in scholarly publications like Congress Considered or the Journal of Conflict Resolution. However, the underpinning drives of his life's accomplishments are all around us: art and culture.
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I write about leadership, philanthropy, arts & culture, and the systems that shape how organizations and ideas grow.