By Maria Rogers Pascual

“You can’t do this work alone. Leaders don’t grow in isolation or survival mode. You need a village.” Brenda Muñoz, Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Labor Center

Have you ever experienced the magic of true accompaniment? What did it feel like? How did it change you? 

I began to fully digest and grasp the power of accompaniment when I joined the LeadersTrust in August 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and a deeply volatile political climate. I was tasked with launching what we now call our Multi-Year Accompaniment (MYA) Program in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation, supporting worker rights leaders and their organizations across California. Having spent years leading immigrant-based organizations myself, I was excited to reconnect with so many of the leaders I had worked alongside. 

Honestly, it was a dream–I never imagined I’d be in a position to help resource leaders to invest in themselves and their organizations in this way. I knew from experience that what we were offering at the LeadersTrust was unusual and tremendously valuable–multi-year capacity grants with dedicated, values-aligned and culturally competent coaches and consultants, Just-in-time wellness resources, peer learning opportunities, and much more! The magic lies in the “much more.” It’s in the unseen that’s underneath the programming that I’d like to talk about here. 

What struck me in those first days of my new position was when Virginia Mosqueda, one of our Program Officers at the foundation referred to the essence of our program as acompañamiento. As someone with an affinity for popular education methodologies, and a long history of living and working in Latin America, I recognized that concept and immediately felt at home. I had just left my beloved team at Prospera where we accompanied Latina immigrant women to launch their cooperative businesses. 

Reflecting on my experience at Prospera helped me fully step into my new role. At Prospera, we knew that cooperative business skills couldn’t be taught in isolation, disconnected from the lived experiences of the immigrant women we worked with. Launching a business wasn’t just about financial tools or technical skills—it was about confidence, courage, and more than anything a loving community of support. Our staff knew that at Prospera, we didn’t just train entrepreneurs, we accompanied women as they stepped into their power, and we helped connect them to each other and to their cooperative roots.

Fast forward to October, 2024: I am in a cafe in the Mission district in San Francisco, just blocks away from the colorful murals surrounding the Women’s Building on 18th Street, drinking the most delicious spicy hot chocolate with one of the leaders in our multi-year program, Brenda Muñoz, from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and our brilliant coach and photographer Masha Chernyak. We had just done a photoshoot in front of some of those magnificent murals at the Women’s Building and were engaged in deep conversation about what accompaniment meant for Brenda and her team.

“You can’t do this work alone,” she said. “ Leaders don’t grow in isolation or survival mode. You need a village. Over the last four years—through a pandemic and compounding crises—the LeadersTrust gave me the love, freedom, and coaching to stay grounded in my values, while truly reimagining what we could become. Their model of liberatory accompaniment gave me confidence to vision the type of leaders that I can and want to be. Every leader and visionary organization deserves this level of support.”

Many in philanthropy still don’t know about, or fully understand our program or what we mean by accompaniment. When you google “accompaniment” one of the first definitions that pops up is “music: an instrument or vocal part designed to support or complement a melody.” Certainly, that metaphor works, in our programs we (our staff and team of capacity coaches) know that the leaders have the melody down. We are there to enhance and strengthen what is already there. When you dig into google a bit further, and venture into the Spanish term “accompañamiento” you start to unearth some of its liberatory origins. 

As the folks at  The Global Resilience Fund remind us “Accompaniment is not new. It has always existed. It is the way that people have been in community to support, sustain, and resource each other within and across their territories, efforts, and movements. It is solidarity, care, transparency, and trust.”

Accompañamiento has deep roots in liberation theory advanced by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. While mostly applied to educational settings, the core principles fully apply to leadership development. In his extensive article called El Accompañamiento y la Educación Popular, Riveros elaborates on the various strategies and characteristics inherent in accompaniment. Here are just a few compelling principles that resonate with our approach at the LeadersTrust:

• Accompaniment is intentional (and consensual). To be effective it must be continuous and sustained over a given/agreed upon period of time. At the LeadersTrust our accompaniment programs are always opt-in. Even as these are offered to grantees of our funding partners we make sure that they are fully optional and not in any way experienced as a requirement for continued support. Furthermore, we have learned over the years that it’s not whether or not folks are ready for this kind of support. It is about “what they are ready for.”  The front line leaders we work with are quite under-resourced with mandates to address the social ills of on shoestring budgets As a result, it’s not easy for front line leaders to pause and consider the benefits of investing in themselves as essential to longer term impact. So we meet them where they are and we stick around, sometimes for 5 years or more. 

• Accompaniment is contextual and must be responsive to cultural specificity addressing the specific needs and challenges identified by the community. At the LeadersTrust we often refer to our capacity coach community as the soul of the accompaniment program. They bring a wealth of leadership and organizational development expertise, but most importantly that expertise is shaped by deep lived experience in, and a commitment to, the communities we work in and with. That is also the case for our staff. That’s the magic! We take the time to connect with the leaders and to match them with their capacity coaches and other consultants. This is about human connection and understanding between our staff, the leaders and their capacity coach. 

• Accompaniment takes place through profound dialogue in a horizontal/non-hierarchical relationship. It requires personal disposition and commitment of all involved. One of the cornerstones of our accompaniment approach is that it is relational, not transactional. We are aware of the power differentials inherent in funder/grantee relationships and we take the time to name them and address them through ongoing relationship building with all involved – our staff, consultants, organizational leaders and funders. There is no silver bullet to equalizing relationships. It is fluid and requires a great deal of attention and intention. At the onset we establish a “firewall” to help us navigate some of the pitfalls of these structural power dynamics, and we constantly remind ourselves to center the agency of leaders every step of the way.  So we consider that the “firewall is as thick or thin as the leaders want it to be.” Some leaders want their funder to be deeply involved and others prefer to have a lot of space. 

• Accompaniment requires flexibility and fluidity: Our accompaniment program was founded by the Haas Jr. Foundation as the Flexible Leadership Awards. While the program has certainly evolved over the years, one central tenet is flexibility which allows us to meet organizations where they are and tailor the approach to support organization-wide transformation with them always at the helm of their journey with us. 

• Accompaniment is a process of discovery of the unique gifts of all involved and results in mutual transformation. At the LeadersTrust we are inspired by the brilliance of the leaders we work with, as individuals and as members of a larger community, and we ourselves are part of the community that gets transformed. 

So what about love? To me, accompaniment is love, deeply rooted in my spiritual practice.  Freire’s works will always point us to profound love and the ways that love centers liberation. Freire tells us that “love is an act of courage, not of fear.” Without profound love for ourselves and each other, we will all lack the courage and motivation to challenge the status quo and address the oppressive elements in our society. 

As we confront these turbulent political moments, this notion of accompañamiento reminds us that we must turn to each others’ strengths in new and old ways. Accompaniment is much more than a leadership and organizational development program. It is an approach, a practice, and a way of being in right-relationship and mutual respect with our community. It says to our community leaders: We see you. We will walk with you. You are not alone. 

I wholeheartedly agree with our friends at the Global Resilience Fund that  “by grounding the work through principles of accompaniment, a journey of solidarity, care, transparency, and trust, funders and the philanthropic sector will be better able to provide relevant support, especially in times of crisis.”

Imagine what would be possible if philanthropy was experienced by community leaders as true accompaniment? 

Are you curious about the magic of accompaniment? Does your organization already practice some of this? I invite you to follow this blog series. Stay tuned for more stories about what accompaniment looks like and feels like with our LeadersTrust community and formidable frontline leaders like Brenda!